Do you measure or restrict the amount of food your pet gets?

My vet warned against allowing self-feeding for the cat because he thought I should be feeding canned food. And he wants the dog on a diet.

Milo is self-regulating, and was on the thin side at his last check-up in mid November.
If he sees the dish showing through the food, he gets suspicious. I have to build a little mt. on top.

I do not regulate, but my cat is about a year and a half old and he is starting to get a bit thick. I am wondering if maybe I should start measuring how much food he gets. I understand that it is easier to prevent animal obesity than fixing it once it has already happened.

Yes, but that is because we feed raw food. It is so nutritionally superior that you can’t give unlimited amounts of it, but they are so satisfied from it that they are not hungry. They have tiny scat like wild animals.

Nope; we have a fairly big dog and he will only eat when we do. We put some food in the bowl at breakfast and he’ll nibble then and throughout the day. We fill again at dinner and he eats only till he’s full. Wish I shared his eating habits and will power!

@jamielynn2328 What do you feed the cat?

@Val123 Whiskas Meaty Selections Dry cat food.

When my dog starts to get fat, i restrict his food….. other than that, he seems happy, so why take away from the love of his life?

Our cats have never been regulated. We notice patterns and go with those, but there’s no strict regulations or anything. None of them are overweight and my cat Monkey lived to be 19 with that system.

No, I do the same thing that you do @Val123 for my cats. None of them are overweight. Sometimes I feed them canned cat food, but only about once a week.

My husband rescued his dog from an abusive situation. The dog had been kept in a dog box in the garage at his old place, and fed…. now and then. He was skin and bones. So my guy adopted him away from that and fed him all the time, table scraps, kibble, all he wanted. The dog had food issues that probably went something like, “I have to eat everything I find because Dog knows when I’ll get fed ever, ever again” so he got really, really fat. So now his food is limited – a handful of kibble after we eat dinner, a larger handful when we eat breakfast. He scarfs it down as soon as it hits the bowl, but at least he’s not as huge anymore.

The min pin, once my dog, and now my parents needed a strict diet when we first got him. I’d have to bake plain chicken and rice, and regulate how much he got because of his Colitis. He hasn’t had a flare up in a very long time. He loves to eat though, and the vet is constantly telling us to limit his food intake.
He’s a smaller sized min-pin (the runt), but weighs up to 13lbs (which is “fat” for a min pin”. He’s lean but chubby at the same time.
Also, recently, he has been forcing himself to throw up prior to his dinner time (which is at 6pm). The vet suggests we feed him a small amount at 3pm, because he seems to have extra acid build up and gets worked up about being hungry and throws up. He eats breakfast around 7am. A quarter of wet food, and a little scoop of dry.

It’s harder with small dogs, well, with this experience it is. I’ve never had a dog that could have food constantly out for them…they’d all eat until they popped (granted, I’ve only had a min pin and beagles..)

Cat wise, we had a large self-feeding container. So, they eat as they please. One cat is lean, the other has always been chubby. So, I don’t think it has anything to do with the access to food.They eat when hungry.

I wouldn’t say that I “limit” my dog’s food. I give them the recommended amount per day but we feed them 3 times a day. Morning, afternoon, and evening. Both dogs are at healthy weights. I always thought you were supposed to feed dogs at scheduled times and not allow 24/7 access to food.

I do. My dog was taken away as a puppy from acquaintances who had neglected him badly and he never did adjust to regulating himself. A ¼ cup of Canidae dry kibble twice a day keeps him from obesity, just barely.

My dog was rescued and was skin and bones when the boy and I got her home. She scarfs her food. We feed her 150% of the recommended dose (she gets 2 meals a day, plus lots of treats) and she’s now on the thin side of healthy. We both really believe she would eat until she got sick if she had unlimited access to food. Like @laureth‘s dog, my dog might really think each meal might be her last.

The only way you can free feed is if you use that stuff that comes in a bag and never spoils and never molds or does any of the thing that real food does! (I think it is made out of sawdust and petroleum products)

I feed a modified BARF diet, measured amounts in the morning and raw bones at night. It seems a more natural diet than kibble, more like what they ate when they were wild.

In the study of human nutrition, it is now being advised that we (humans) avoid overly processed foods, don’t eat anything that won’t rot. But since vets have gone into the dog food selling business, they are advising just the opposite.

Strange coincidence????

@Likeradar Good post..I was assuming a regular upbringing…..

@rooeytoo and @Marina My brother is very into and involved in the raw foods movement and has been sending me a lot of information on the benefits of raw foods for dogs. How expensive, time consuming, and difficult is it to do? And how does it work if you need to send your dog to sleep-away camp (kennel, whatevs :) ) for a few nights?

@Likeradar Good question..

My kitty gets as much food as she wants. I was told to give her no more than a cup of dry food a day, but it became apparent early on that she’d never eat that much. She eats about ½ to ⅔ of a cup a day, so I add about ⅔ a cup a day to her bowl every morning. It’s rarely completely empty in the morning, and if it is I add a little extra.

She’s gained weight lately, but until a few months ago she was living at my mom’s house, where she had 4 other kitties to compete with for food (there they get 1 cup of food a day per cat). So there they do have a limit, and there are 2 normal-weight cats and 2 tubby cats. When my kit was there she was slightly underweight, so I think she’s just bouncing up to where she’s supposed to be.

@fireinthepriory Plus cats (and dogs, and people for that matter) gain weight at the beginning of winter, AND their coats get thicker. They lose it, and shed, come spring…

I got my kitten when she was 4 months old from the shelter and asked the vet about this because my parents don’t regulate the cat food and their cats are pretty fat. She said basically:
Your kitten is going to be growing constantly for the next year so she’ll need as much food as she wants. After that year mark, she’ll slow down her growth and you’ll need to start watching what you feed her or she’ll just put on fat. Dry food is high on carbs, so it’s like her Dorito’s. Cats are carnivores by nature, so you really want a wet food that has a high protein content, at least 11–14% or more. After that year mark, you’ll want to have her diet focused on meat (wet food) with some dry food filler.

So until she was a year old, dry food bowl was constantly full and wet food bowl got ½ a can twice day (before i went to school and when i got home). Now that she’s over the year mark, I feed her 2–3 times a day, when we eat meals. My main problem is that she doesn’t eat her wet food all in one go now, so some of it sits and dries out and is generally gross. I feel like it’s bad for her? So she gets ¼ cup dry food at breakfast. If it’s gone by lunchtime, she gets another ¼ cup. And then at dinner, I mix ½–⅓ can wet food (the big Friskies cans) with some dry food.

Seems to be working so far. She’s a healthy weight and doesn’t have that “I’ve been fixed and am fat” pouch.

I wonder if people who feed their cats wet food wind up with heavier cats than people who feed them dry foods? (And how could anyone afford that much wet food!)

@Val123 Well, I get Friskies wet food from Walmart. It’s 24 cans for $10. Even at a can a day, that’s a month’s worth. I do only have 1 cat, so I guess that helps…

You could substitute for a dry food with a higher meat content, since that’s all that really matters? I think Evo makes one

@rooeytoo – “BARF” diet? I’m afraid, yet fascinated… what is it?

BARF = bones and raw food, if you google you will get myriad hits.

I don’t know how to compare to dry food, depends on which dry you feed. It is more time consuming, but I save all veg scraps, carrot peelings, etc, into a bag in the freezer. When I need it I nuke all those scraps, which is contrary to true BARF methods, also add rice or pasta, put it in food processor and make a mush which I then measure into portions and freeze. Each day I add fresh meat, roo or chicken or whatever is on sale. I do throw in a handful of dry just in case there are some vits or minerals I am missing. They get that in the morning and raw meaty bones in the evening.

There are 2 12 year olds and a 2 year old. All are in good weight and health.

It works for me but is not as convenient as opening a bag or can and dumping it into a bowl, but it sure smells better and as was said above, smaller less odorous poops! Reduces skin probs and ear infections, no obesity and clean teeth from the bones. I have never had the 12 year old akita’s teeth cleaned and they are in good shape for his age.

Horses, yes.
Barn cat, no. She feeds herself.
The farm dogs have an automatic food thing. They also like killing things.
Hamster, whenever his food is low, it gets refilled.
Fish get fed twice a day.

cool, thanks!

I also feed raw, so no free-feeding here. When my cat was near the end of her life, she wouldn’t eat the raw diet anymore so I gave her canned food. I miss having a kitty :-(

We used to feed our GSD raw, but it was very expensive. She was a Seeing Eye dog, who has since retired, and her replacement gets Ziwi-Peak which is hideously expensive, but is all we could find that wouldn’t trigger severe food allergies in the dog. Our other dog, who is a pet, gets EVO which is a high-meat dried food. Our cat gets a high-meat canned food.

Our cats get to self-feed dry food. The dogs get fed twice a day but I have to limit as well as oversee them because the American Bulldog and the Pitbull will eat their own food and then everyone else’s and will still think they are hungry.

@Likeradar and @Val123 It is not difficult. You determine the amount to feed by body weight. It is more difficult if you are going to prepare your own. I have done it and found it just too time consuming for me. I purchase prepared commercial BARF diet which comes frozen in patties. Most independent ret food retailers carry raw food. Talk to yours and get advice. The makers also offer samples.

When gormless Prince was still alive, I used to restrict his food to control his weight. I wish someone would do that for me!

@janbb Me too.. If someone could only give me only a scoop.

For Bailey the cockapoo, I fill her bowl when it’s empty, She eats when she’s hungry. Although, she does enjoy kitten chow. Have to watch when I feed Cobra the Cat, or she’s gourge herself.
For Morgan the St. Bernard, we allow up to 4 cups a day. Now the weather is getting colder, we give more, and she will finish off almost 5 cups. Of course, there’s about 2 gallons of water a day to complement to food. About every two weeks, she’ll go a day or two with only like snack amount of food….

I forgot to add that Milo the cat does snack on parts of the mice he catches; he also has some regular nibbles of both fresh grass and catnip.

Yes, we measure and restrict the dry food for both our dog and our cat. They would both eat themselves to death if we allowed them unlimited access. This is the first time I had pets who didn’t know when to stop eating.

I have to severely regulate Basil. He gets ¼ cup of organic dry food twice a day. He’d “self-regulate” back when I gave him the ‘recommended’ amount of 1 cup per day, but started putting on weight (which I never understood, since he’s annoyingly active).

Come to think of it, I don’t know any of my animals that have ever been able to regulate their own weight.

I have had many cats who seem to stay slim and healthy even when allowed to help themselves to dry food at any time. Canned food is another story. However, I have only known a very few dogs who can do that. One was my sister’s dog, Sam, who had Parvo as a puppy and never was terribly excited by food for the rest of his life.

With our current family of five dogs only one seems to hold back on eating, but she is an older dog and ranks very low in the pack. The two top dogs would both eat until their stomachs literally burst if I let them and the remaining two eat quickly but don’t try to steal from anyone else. The top two will shove them out of the way and grab what’s in their bowls if they don’t down it all promptly. However, if kept away from the others they will happily eat anything they can get their teeth into.

@andrew Basil is the snake in A Clockwork Orange!

Never have any of my pets ever been restricted on the food they were allowed to eat. Right now I have two cats and they get canned food in the morning around six-thirty and around six-thirty at night. They have dry cat food that they have access to all day and night should they get hungry. Neither of them is overweight, the one is a bit bigger than the other but she has puffy thick fur. They’re both healthy, happy kittens without being on a diet.

Yes, but when our cat is really very hungry she let’s us know.

My family has always restricted my pets’ food supply, because we’ve always had multiple pets. If we left food out for our three cats, our dog would probably eat it all.

With cats, we’ve almost always had sets of siblings. And strangely, the same pattern tends to happen with the siblings: there’s a “dominant” one, who’s generally mellow but kind of a bully, who eats much more and gets overweight. The “submissive” one is usually more quirky and skittish and stays relatively thin. Therefore we regulate the food so the dominant one doesn’t eat it all.

Two of my current cats (brothers, one of them is currently my icon) were feral and are absolutely obsessed with food. We got them when they were 3 weeks old and fed them by hand with bottles. Perhaps it was that lack of a mother cat to help them with feeding that they became so obsessed, or just their feral instincts to eat as much as they can. Anyway, now they act hungry all the time and, when given the chance, will eat until they’re sick. As it is, when we feed the brothers we have to watch them like hawks so the bigger one doesn’t steal the smaller one’s food, then lock him in a separate room when he tries to.

I guess I envy people who can just leave out a big bowl of food for their animals. It would be a lot less work. But in my experience, the more you feed a pet personally, the more they like you and respond to you. So in that sense I don’t really mind it.

When I was little, we had five dogs. It was their entire family. Grandmother, father, uncle, outside mother, son. The father and son would get into a fight if they were both eating at the same time, so we had to regulate who ate when and couldn’t keep food down for them. We also had to make sure they weren’t both around if we were eating a meal. They might fight for getting scraps.

@ParaParaYukiko We have the cats food on a high shelf in the laundry room where the dogs can’t get to it….

@Val123: Surely the cats can get up there? http://i33.tinypic.com/1hp99i.jpg

@gailcalled LOL! Yes, the cats can, the dogs can’t!

@Val123. Yet….

@gailcalled Urrmmm. you have a point…. my dawg

@Val123: Just pray that the little leaper does not give lessons to his dawgie friends.

@Val123 Is your son in any of those videos!?

@gailcalled The others are much too dignified for such antics! Well, actually, only one is dignified, the other is too short! @rangerr I was shooting the video, my son was coaxing/teasing the dog into jumping….LOL!! Wait…are you referring to ALL of the video’s I have down loaded to youtube?? Yes. He does premiere in one of them…

@Val123 That’s what I meant.

See snake….

lolSnake
Edit: I like your accent. And the only appearance by your son in that video is his behind! Silly, mommyVal.

@Val123 Well we don’t have the dog problem anymore, I was talking about a problem I had with a dog who passed away a few years ago. But even then, you’d be surprised what that dog could do! We didn’t have many places in the house that he couldn’t get to. Thanks for the suggestion, though!

@rangerr No….there are three videos all together! Snakes in the rain, 1, 2, and 3….don’t know which one you saw…..

@ParaParaYukiko Was the dog a hound dawg by any chance? Hound dawgs are tree climbin’ fools!

@Val123 I found all 3. Snakes are so pretty.

@rangerr snake is daid. Chris felt bad, but the snake was pretty mean, hissing and stuff, and he couldn’t tell what kind it was, whether it was poisonous or not….they ended up injuring him in the process of getting him extricated and so he had to be put down. My son loves critters like that, so he seriously wished he had been able to take it home and pet it instead…..Did you like my Steve Erwin act in the first one?!!

:(
edit- yes.

@Val123 It wasn’t a hound, it was a big, 80 lb chocolate lab/Chesapeake bay/German Shorthaired Pointer mix or something who happened to learn how to get up on counters from a smaller, less well-behaved doggie friend. Plus, my house just seems to be made for short people.

I have two cats, and fill their bowl when I wake up, and before I go to bed. I don’t think it’s regulating it though, because often food is left in it, or they stop being annoying after they’ve eaten.
I sometimes make exceptions. They constantly have fresh water, which I refill every chance I get, despite that I use a dome water cleanser.

No, I “freefeed”. Just keep the bowls full. All of my animals are good about only eating what they need. They are all in good shape.