Changing feeding habits
 

Hi all. First time poster to this site. My wife and I will be getting a 3 year old chocolate lab tomorrow. She is a healthy dog and has been fed on a morning and evening schedule since she was rescued at 6 months. We typically leave dry feed and water out all day for our dogs with good success. Would you anticipate any problem changing the labs feeding schedule if we worked her into it gradually?

If she is healthy,at a good weight, and has been on this schedual since she was 6 months,then I would stick to it and not change it.

"Some" Labs tend to become overweight if free fed.This because they will eat all day.And trust me,I have seen many overweight Labs...And that will definately cause health issues.Which is something you don't want.

My GSD's have been free fed dry when they were pups.That's only because they were not hoovers.And they also got canned 3x's a day..So the dry was left out for snacking.

Oh,and congrats on your new furbaby.

And don't forget to post pics..:D

Labs are notorious for getting fat and always acting like they are starving. Most labs will not do well with free feeding. Most will probably eat the whole bag in one sitting.:eek:

We've never fed our labs twice a day, except for the pup we have now, but that's going to change when she's a year old. Yes, labs are gluttons. We adopted a 3 year old female and I can't begin to tell you everything she ate! Probably the worst was a bucket of creosote that my husband had cleaned out of the chimney of our woodstove. Oh yeah, and the oil from a deep fat fryer. The old girl lived to be 14 and surprisingly enough didn't die from her taste in food. LOL.

Yes, just like everyone has said "labs are gluttons" so definitely do not leave food out for him all day. My golden lab is now 6 1/2 months old and I can finally put his meal down all at once (I feed him morning and night). Before that I had to use two bowls - - one to measure his food into and the other to put a handful of food in at a time. If I didn`t do that he`d eat way too fast and then throw up an hour later.

I must have had exceptions then. I've always had lab mixes and we've always put down a bowl of dry food to munch on and a bowl of food for breakfast and a bowl of food for dinner. Granted they are mixes, which may have something to do with it, but my first dog lived to be 17 1/2 before we had to put him down (something I didn't agree with). The second dog is my parents dog now and she is about 6 or so and Jesse now who is 2. None of them ever wolfed down their food. We've always put the food down and they don't eat right away, they eat when they are ready. It's weird and I don't know how we "trained" them to do this, but it's just always been like that. Now my sisters dog (GSD/Rotti mix) is another story...