How many feedings a day?

[Birdie'sMom]

Birdie eats twice a day. Once before I leave for work (@7ish) and once about an hour after I get home (@6ish).

[jbach]

Twice daily. Morning before work and sometime early/late evening (excluding training day). The reason was primarily from reading about bloat. It just seems more logical to spread out the required food twice daily. Nikki would eat non stop if we let her.

[TrishB]

Parker hasn't shown any signs of lacking interest in any meal. He'll inhale anything I put in front of him. So I'm continuing with 3. As I said - I might eventually go down to 2, but it will stay there.

As for 'free feeding' (allowing them to eat all day, when they want):
1) If you have a dog with temperament / dominance issues, I wouldn't recommend it. By giving the dog the choice of when and how he eats, you're elevating him in the pack order.
2) It makes it harder to potty train puppies because you can't anticipate when they'll need to go. Because they can eat all the time, they can poop all the time.
3) As these dogs get older, if they have an illness that causes them to lose interest in food / lack appitite, free feeders tend to be more difficult to entice. This isn't in any book - just from my 9 years of experience in vet clinics. We ended up force feeding a lot more free feeders than we did feedings dogs. Maybe it's because they feel that they'll eat when they want due to their elevated status. I dont' know. But that's the way it worked out often more than not.
4) It's more difficult to monitor how much a dog eats per day.
5) If you use treats, it can diminish their drive for them because they're full!

That being said - my old girl, Bridget (Aussie Cattle Dog, now at the bridge) was fed free feedings. When she began to lose weight, it was difficult to notice because we hadn't noticed her intake drop. Other than that, she did manage quite nicely for her 13 years.

[poohbearsmom]

My pups have always been fed 3x a day, until about 4mos of age. Then cut back to two. Feedings sure do help with potty training.

I will occasionally fast them a meal, and when training with food, I cut a meal. If I work with them in the morning, they will get a meal late, etc.....

I agree with TrishB about freefeeding, in that, it's difficult to measure the amount the dog is taking in, and I want to know if my dogs have an apetite or not.
I also use feeding time as a training tool, by giving the dogs a "wait" command....
I can put down Deit and Pooh's food, and they will wait until the OK is given...[one day I forgot to say OK, I put in a load of laundry, went outside to check the mail, said hello to the neighbor, came back in, and lo and behold, they were looking at me as though I was torturing them (Pavlov woulda been proud of the pool of drool under Deiter).... Oops. OK... crunch crunch crunch. ]

Elisabeth