Dog feeding schedule.

[JuicyDrop]

We have a 7 month old Labrador who up until recently was still on four meals a day. We have really struggled to cut it down to three meals - he knows his feeding schedule and whines and fusses when he expects his food and won’t be distracted with it.
I’m trying again this week to get him on three meals a day. Today is the first day and I was going for a rough guide of feeding at 6am, 12pm and 6pm. It is now 4pm and he is whining and asking for his meal and I have no idea how this is going to work. His meals have been slightly bigger today to compensate for not having that fourth meal at night but it doesn’t seem to have made a difference - he wants his tea now and by the new schedule I wouldn’t be giving it for another two hours.
He really could do to drop to three meals as he’s a big dog for his age and we’ve found it quite tying having to be home every four hours to feed him.
I just wondered how other dogs adjusted to changing their feeding schedules as they got older. As ours really doesn’t seem happy.
i think in hindsight we’ve had him in too much of a routine during puppyhood but it wasn’t intentional- he was just fed after work and school runs so it ended up always been the same time everyday and now he’s very much run by the clock 🙄

Do you use any food related treats like a treat ball, snuffle mat or licky mat? Might be a good distraction.
Lots of natural chews you could buy ( supervised) If you are worried about weight you could use chopped apple, carrot or low fat yoghurt.

Thank you. I did think this would be the way to go but he is a big boy and I am worried about his weight. He sits at about 23kg but at his latest vet visit they said he was perfectly healthy.
He’s also reacted to a lot of things in the past - yoghurt being one of them so he can’t have that. He loves natural chews and carrots though so I may throw him one of them as he is whining and whining for his meal right now.

He really could do to drop to three meals as he’s a big dog for his age and we’ve found it quite tying having to be home every four hours to feed him.

Are you leaving him for large parts of the day alone?

More separately, why does he need to drop to three meals? I didn't think the advice for bigger dogs was to feed larger meals less often, I thought it was the opposite actually.

I wouldn't be giving him extra food treats though. You're just teaching him that begging for food gets him food. Scrounging isn't a quality you want to reinforce!

This is one of those times I'd let him cry it out. He'll get used to it.

When I was doing this with my lab, I gradually moved meal 2 out of the, and served meal 3 early, until they coincided ( probably took a week).

I then left him on 3 meals - he was a dog that was easily sick, so he ate at around 7am, 4 pm and 9 pm.

He’s left for two hours on a Monday and Friday. These are the only days me and my husband are both at work- my mother in law has him for most of the day but leaves him for around two hours in the afternoon before my husband gets home. He’s also left for the school runs which are 30 minutes twice a day. It was the vet who said that he should now be on three meals a day which is why we’ve tried hard to do this. I’m not sure whether that advice differs between vets- that is just what ours told us.

Thank you- I realise now I should maybe have done it gradually as you say.
I gave him a carrot at his old meal time of 4pm and he whined a little more after that then just gave up and went to sleep. He’s still sleeping now.

I have always just dropped a feed and ignored any associated fuss. They soon get used to it.

It's probably less that it's a particular time and more he probably associates you finishing work and doing the school run as dinner time

Now it's getting lighter in the evenings, can you do a walk at 4 to interrupt the routine a bit?

Some people swear by routines but I find it easier to not get them into too much of a routine so we mix things up a bit.

I made sure I took my Lab out when he started that performance. By the time we got back the time had passed. You need to stick with it. Mine is now fed at 6 AM and 5.30 PM.

Yes it’s definitely more a routine thing than him being genuinely hungry I think.
Going forward I will be introducing a walk after I’ve got home from school to change his routine up a bit. Although he’s terrible on the lead so that’s a whole other issue.

We never feed at the same time everyday - and never have done. If you get them into thinking 5pm = food or 2pm = walk, you can end up with a really demanding dog.

As regards his weight, you should be able to feel his ribs fairly easily. He should have a waist when viewed from above and a tuck when viewed from the side.

With my previous Lab I remember the hardest part was moving him from 3 meals to 2. So what we did was give him a kong stuffed with wet food at the time he was missing a meal (in his case, lunchtime). It takes a while for them to get all the wet food out of the kong so it's a bit of mental stimulation plus some food to keep them going.

You could try giving yours a kong in the afternoons? Though Labs always nag a lot for food so I must admit we used to give our previous dog his last meal at 5pm not 6pm as per the plan.

He coped perfectly well from 5pm to 6am which was his breakfast time. He seemed to relax once he realised he had eaten all his food for the day.