Myth: My Dog Needs Two Square Meals A Day
Some dogs do well on having two square meals a day. However if your dog:
Gets ‘hunger pukes’
Is overweight or obese
Is a picky eater
Has immune issues
Resource guards
Demands/begs when it’s meal time
Has very low food drive
…There are some things to consider.
Hunger has nothing to do with the amount that needs to be eaten. If that were true, 70% of Americans wouldn’t be overweight or obese. If your dog isn’t eating when you are offering food - let them refuse. They may be full, they may have an upset stomach, or the food may have lost its novelty. I don’t know about you, but I could be stuffed to the brim, yet if dessert comes out, all the sudden I find room. When you start to bring out increasingly enticing food choices, of COURSE they will start to eat.
Fasting is hugely beneficial to our innerworkings. When the body is allowed time to fast, a lot of amazing things happen: autophagy and the migratory motor complex kick into gear, the immune system gets a boost, blood sugar lowers, and inflammation decreases.
We all know how we feel when we are hangry. It’s both mental and physical. When we know it’s coming, we build up the anticipation. However, when we start relying on these heavily engrained routines, we lose the ability to adapt to situations where we aren’t able to eat at the same time and in the same environment every day.
Feeding two meals a day CAN prevent bloat (GDV) in dogs who have high caloric needs or are being fed large volumes of food, however you’ll only see this in working dogs, particularly intact males during hunting season.
Your dog’s suggested intake on the bag of food is not the best indicator of how much your dog should be eating; paying attention to their weight and body composition is!
Eating two square meals is not the only way to feed a dog. You can also:
Fast them once a week on a raw meaty bone or bone broth
Hand-feed (if you are my client you know I’m a huge fan of this!)
Existential feeding
One meal rotated between a morning or night feeding with the same amount of food they would get split between two meals
Box-feeding
Foraging
There are so many ways we can utilize our dog’s food intake to work in training, mentally stimulate them, and build our relationship and relevancy with them.
How you feed your dog should be what’s best for YOUR dog and most dogs could benefit from switching up the two meals a day routine!