Does anyone have a dog who eats only one meal a day and how old were they when they stopped eating breakfast?

Most people that I know feed one meal a day, and usually this is at around 12 months of age.

In bloat prone breeds, or just because it wuits the dog and owner, many dogs now have two meals a day, or sometimes just a biscuit first thing or last thing at night.

I feed my adult dogs two meals a day.

I found that when faced with a full days food in one sitting, they would start to get picky but as soon as I increased it to 2, they started eating well.

Helen

Thanks for the replys its nice to know it wont do any harm for a dog to miss Breakfast. Helen you clever thing :) now I know why Morse is a Picky Pointer, were putting too much in the bowl. This I can deal with.

I weigh my dogs daily quota out and give one third for breakfast with a spoonful of live yogurt and the rest in the evening, they seem to enjoy it better this way.

Hi

Sal still has two meals a day breakfast and then a meat/dried meal in the evening. Suits her well and we will stick with it. Works for us :D

Karen

Our border collie used to be on one meal a day, which was okay as she didn't eat a lot - less than 2 cups a day. But then when we got a puppy, it seemed a bit mean (well, she thought so!!) that she was only getting the one lot and the puppy three lots - so really since that time, I feed her twice a day, and my other dog as well now that he's adult. Same quantity, just half in the morning, half in the evening.
Hilda

My 2, 1 a puppy other an adult get 2 meals a day,kibble in the morning and meat and veg for dinner,some days they wont touch their breckie and other days they scoff it down. I think 1 meal per day is too much hard work for their digestive system.

~christine~

Mine have one meal - purely because the first one we had decided for himself he didn't want breakfast any more, so the others were reduced to one as they grew up.

its better to leave the daily ration down all day so that the dog can eat it when it feels hungary not when the owner decides its dinnertime.

That may well work with just one dog, but I'd end up with one very fat dog and three others starving! ;)

I feed 4 bonio's each in the morning and 4 cups of dry complete (beta)(soaked,so its already swollen to half its size) in the evening this has always worked well for mine(rotties & gsd's) as they also tended to not want the morning meal.

Two meals is not only advised for breeds prone to bloat but it also breaks the day up and gives the dog something else to look forward to. If your dog is a bolter you can scatter dry food on the lawn it will take longer to eat and mimic foraging. Leaving food down all day is unwise if - it is anything but dry (hygiene and smell problems in the summer), if you have more than one dog (who is eating what) and just encourages fussy eating (if they have not finished it in 10 minutes they can't really be hungry).

Plus fights! I believe leaving food down is the main reason dogs squabble.

Again that's a choice that works with some dogs but not others. If you left food down all day for a lab or a beagle you'd soon find you had a very fat lab or beagle. Leaving food out all day also works the opposite for some dogs. It can make them picky eaters. So you have to find what works for you and your dogs.

I generally have always left food out all day and that worked for my one dog. However with whippets it's not common that you can do that or you'll have either a FAT whippet or a finicky whippet, so when we added the whippet we were very lucky that she self-regulated her intake very well and we could keep to that, but had been prepared to make it two separate feedings and no food left out.

We fed 'two meals a day' in the sense that although the kibble was down all day, it would be topped up morning and evening with some tinned to ensure that they ate first thing in the morning and then in the evening. If they didn't we had one who would be sick in the morning from empty tummy syndrome.

We've since started feeding raw, so they get their kibble meal in the morning. The bit that's left is left out for them to munch if the so feel, and then in the evening they get their raw meal. Six month of doing this and the dogs have never looked better:)

Anyway, yes leaving it down is an option - but only if it works for your dog. Not all dogs are made the same with the same sense.

Wendy

My spaniels lurve their breakfast, they wake me up really early some mornings just to see if I will give in and feed them. My eldest springer used to get one meal a day and she was fine, but introducing a puppy meant I started giving her breakfast also. Now with 3 who all love food I think I would face a riot if I went back to one meal a day, however they do not get alot for breakfast, enough to keep them happy.