23 Aug Why you should never free feed your dog

Free feeding–or allowing your dog to “graze” on a full food bowl at will–is simply against nature. It is against how the wolf bonds her cubs to her by providing food and safety, then later taking them out and teaching them when and how to hunt. It is against the canine’s wild feast-and-famine food cycle that is hard-wired into their biology, and that programs them to work for their food.

In the domestic home, free feeding makes a dog both very insecure and too independent. It is convenient for humans to do it but it is not the way to bond a dog to you or to add any value to their mental or physical health. Horses and cattle graze but they don’t do it all day long non-stop… and besides, horses and cattle are prey animals, not predators. Grazing messes with a predator’s metabolism, and it also works the liver, kidney and bodily functions all day long to break down food, and it conflicts and confuses the brain. Free feeding makes dogs feel that they are on their own. Here comes the food and I can eat when I want, if I want or if I don’t. I am my own master. This is extremely detrimental for training and bonding.

Free feeding also puts weight on dogs most of the time, for you cannot judge how much they are getting. Some dogs will eat themselves to death, even while others seem to self-regulate. Some dogs become picky eaters and after free feeding have to be taught to eat properly all over again. Almost every time, free feeding creates unhealthy eating habits.

So those of you with children or when you were a child, do parents allow their children to eat meals whenever they wish? Do they say, we will put food out and fill the jars on the table and counters and fill the refrigerator and we will go on with our lives and you can come and go and eat any time you wish to and do whatever you wish to? No, we don’t do that because it isn’t healthy. Dogs need a leader to supply them with their life supply. A leader gives them life. They depend on that leader to give them that which sustains them and keeps them alive, and to provide them with the structure their biology demands. Life, quite simply, is associated with food. He who leads feeds, he who feeds leads.

I can spot free-fed dogs a mile away with just a few sentences from their owners. I ask if they free feed and they wonder how I know. It shows–it tells the story loud and clear.