Feeding only 3-4 times a week?

[Carina43]

This little article is from a Danish author who espouses raw diets; however this concept of infrequent & irregular feedings applies to any sort of canine diet.
He suggests elsewhere that optimal meal frequency is 3-4 times per week. (I suggest that's mean, unecessary, and could get one slapped with animal cruelty charges in the US!)

Anyhow, whaddaya'll think:
http://k9joy.com/dogarticles/dogfood01conditioning.pdf

[DNeff]

Riven would probably keel over dead after one day of going without food. Not to mention breakfast and dinner are the highlights of Osa's day. They live to eat. Talk about cruel.

I can see some of the logic in their arguement, but I would rather just vary when I feed, and not go for a couple of days without feeding.

Dawn + Osa
U-CD Cammcastle's Mystic Riven CDX OAC OGC OAJ NA TT CGC
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[LavenderRott]

My dogs rarely eat at the same time every day. Some mornings breakfast may be at 6 am and some mornings at 9 am. Same with dinner. There has even been an occassion when they have missed dinner. But not often.

My brother's cat gets ill if he is not fed at 5 pm. This means that his family must leave places to go home and feed the cat. If the family is out of town, my mom has to be there to feed the cat.

I think that such a strict schedule is ridiculous. I don't want to plan my families life around what time my dog needs dinner. God forbid there was an emergency.

[lblax]

actually it makes sense animals in the wild certainly dont eat on a schedule let alone they dont eat everyday..... it makes sense and if someone chose to feed this way and there animal did well on it i see nothing wrong with the method or his ideas

[Carina43]

Now I do agree about varying times and types of food, but not in letting a dog go two days without a meal (unless the particular dog just naturally prefers that sort of feeding schedule.) I'm not equating this to animal abuse or anything, I just don't see much benefit to it.

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. ;)

[Miabella]

Part of the problem with this is that feeding at set times sets up a predictable elimination schedule. For people like me who work and can't be home all day to wait for the dog to poop, this really isn't workable.

[samanthac]

Originally Posted by lblax

actually it makes sense animals in the wild certainly dont eat on a schedule let alone they dont eat everyday..... it makes sense and if someone chose to feed this way and there animal did well on it i see nothing wrong with the method or his ideas

That was my thought as well. Wild canids go days without food sometimes and they certainly have a very varied diet. And they seem to do just fine.

[spoteet]

I offer food to Sajan twice a day but he often choses to go without for up to 3 days. He has a veyr sensitive digestive system and knows better than I do when he shouldn't eat. There are times when we are out late and I chose to not feed him supper but I know it's not hurting him.

[MARYDVM]

Part of the argument about how dogs eat in nature, breaks down because we really don't know exactly how often a wild canine eats. A study on arctic wolves found that their 2 main sources of food were caribou, and mice. The caribou may have been consumed every week or so, but the mice were every day. And the dog developed as a scavenger around human camps - which means eating bits and pieces here and there. Maybe the most "natural" way of feeding for the dog these days is to send it out to forage once a week on garbage day.

[mmgy]

I see exactly no point in converting a domesticated, routine-oriented dog to this.

[Judi W]

That was my thought as well. Wild canids go days without food sometimes and they certainly have a very varied diet. And they seem to do just fine.

The first sentence is certainly true and while I will occasionally fast a dog for a day and don't expect any to drop dead for missing a meal or two, it is also true that our dogs are not wild canids. The second one can be quite questionable. Longevity and good health in the wild is far from a certainty. Mother nature can be very cruel and the idealized view of nature is deceptive.

[Storm's mom]

If I tried that my dogs would drive me insane. I could set the clock to when it's their feeding time.

[rottnkidd]

Feeding only 3-4x a week seems a bit severe to me. I'm assumimg this concept pertains to healthy dogs only. In that case, then feeding variety in food makes sense, as well as varying the time for those that are able. Perhaps a healthy dog that's inactive, or even in need of losing a few pounds could benefit from a modified version of this feed-less theory.
kathy

[BostonRott]

Originally Posted by samanthac

That was my thought as well. Wild canids go days without food sometimes and they certainly have a very varied diet. And they seem to do just fine.

Doing just fine......for what living conditions? They are exposed to minimal disease, as they don't have humans who travel from dog place (event) to dog place (training facility/event) and bring home bugs. They aren't asked to perform on command (competition) and thus present unnatural challenges repeatedly to their structure (when, in the wild, does a dog repeatedly jump 1m jumps? Climb walls over and over to retreive or practice contacts? Jump series of jumps over and over?)

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.

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?

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??

[Skip]

Originally Posted by Carina43

This little article is from a Danish author who espouses raw diets; however this concept of infrequent & irregular feedings applies to any sort of canine diet.
He suggests elsewhere that optimal meal frequency is 3-4 times per week. (I suggest that's mean, unecessary, and could get one slapped with animal cruelty charges in the US!)

Anyhow, whaddaya'll think:
http://k9joy.com/dogarticles/dogfood01conditioning.pdf

Anybody can get an article published...sometimes you only have to read a couple sentences (or the title) to figure out if it's worthy of gaining anything useful from it. I saw nothing useful.