Feeding only 3-4 times a week?

[breeze]

interesting article.
but our dog has enough problems keeping weight on at two meals a day--consuming almost 3lbs of raw meat and veggies per day. i just can't imagine feeding bree 4 to 6 meals a week! she'd disappear within weeks!

but the idea of feeding your dog at irregular times seems like a good idea--which we naturally tend to do anyway because of our schedules.

[spidey]

The argument that "such & such is so in "nature" thus it is optimal for my dog" rarely makes sense to me. There's all kinds of things that are such & such in nature that we don't apply to our pets - because they are domesticated animals, not wolves, pumas, or jackals.

I'm definitely on this side of the argument. It makes no sense to me. It happens in nature because wild canids have no other choice - our dogs are not wild canids, and wild canids do not live long, healthy lives anyway, so I fail to see how attempting to emulate a lifestyle (of a different animal) which often results in early death is in any way helpful to our dogs. Wild dogs' lifestyles aren't the "ideal" lifestyle, it's the only lifestyle they can have - just because something survives living a certain way in no way implies that the way they live is the best way for them to live. "Natural" doesn't always equal "good". I have no problem with fasting for a day here and there, but there's really no logic behind the "feed your dog like a wolf" argument.

[Muckdogs]

Without going into all the fuss, I am a fan of fasting my dogs once per week for a single day.

[samanthac]

I don't buy the "in the wild" argument at all. A lot of research shows, via mitochondrial DNA, that our dogs are NOT direct descendants of wolves. Our dogs have not lived in the wild for eons.

I think you are going a way far to the right with this argument and really streching far beyond the limitations of my two sentence response. What I stated was that dogs do not need to eat every single day of day of their lives in order to survive. I also pointed out that pointed out that wild CANIDS...that means of the dog family... do not eat every single day and manage to survive. I did not say that dogs were direct descendants of wolves nor did I even mention wolves. But dogs are part of the canid family so that makes them indirectly related to wolves, foxes, coyotes, dingos, etc.

Shall we allow them to run loose in the neighborhood? Form packs which hunt/kill neighborhood cats, small children and other suitable prey? Stay intact and breed as pack order/nature dictates? Stop vaccinating against all diseases and allow parvo and rabies to just take their natural toll on the population?

That is just non-sensical and how on earth you ever got that out of my two line response I will never know.

While my dogs certainly don't eat on a fixed schedule, they do eat twice per day (unless ill). HOw often did OUR ancestors eat? Would YOU like to have to go out and hunt/gather,and not eat if you weren't able to find anything?? Why would you subject your dog to this same archaeic method??

I did not say I agreed with the study or that I would do it, Gretchen. What I said that it is not necessary for dogs to eat every day to survive. I have a friend whose dog self regulates...doesn't eat for two or three days sometimes. Not a thing wrong with the dog, is a good weight, etc. But only eats when its hungry. I have seen horribly starved dogs (for months) come into rescue that should have never survived but did somehow. So is it ideal, yes. Is it necessary to survival, no.

And I certainly don't know if I buy all this malarky about the quality of life being so horrible for wild canids. They have managed to eat, sleep, breed and survive through thousands of years without us arrogant humans around. We have taken away their territories and forced them into small areas, gunned them down, hunted them, trapped them, poisoned them and killed off their food supplies. But still they manage to survive. Do they succumb to disease and death? Well, yes, but so do our dogs! Am I saying its the ideal way to live? If I anthromorphasize, then I guess I would have to say no. But one thing I do know is that we are not seeing a hell of a lot of domesticated wolves and coyotes and other wild canids living with us. Why is it that dogs stuck up an alliance with man, but other wild canids did not??? Can anyone explain that? So on that note, maybe its not our perfect life, but maybe it is theirs.

[Patinka]

Let's stay on the subject of the thread.

Patinka

[bump]

The problem I see with feeding the dog 3-4 times a week, is the gorging. It would be awfully hard to work a dog after it had just eaten enough for two days.

[Brooke&Ryan]

Well I know that if Julius was only fed 3-4 times a week he would be doing quite a bit more "freelance" cabinet chewing. ;)

Julius is fed at the same time every morning & then we'll change times in the afternoon depending on our activities.

Through all of the BARF books that I've read many suggested fasting once a week since wild dogs did this also when food was not available. I would not do this to Julius though...

:)
Brooke