Will free-choice feeding make my dog overweight?

Free-choice feeding could make your dog overweight. Some dogs can manage themselves well. They eat enough to be full. But as a whole, I would say most dogs need to be fed on a schedule.

Most of the time, yes. Just like people, most dogs have a hard time saying no when there's food put down in front of them. There are a few choice dogs that are able to graze and maintain a healthy weight. But the vast majority of dogs, if they're fed free-choice or just have food out all the time, they will over eat and eventually become overweight.

It could. Free-choice feeding is one of the culprits in obesity. There is undoubtedly a growing epidemic of obesity in our small animal patients, just like it is mimicking human obesity. We don't want to allow a dog to eat as much as they want.

There are a very small number of dogs that don't overeat, and with those animals, grazing is fine. We need to control how much the vast majority of dogs are eating, and meal feeding is an ideal way to do that.

It definitely can. Some dogs will eat and eat. We're sometimes better able to control what they eat than what we eat ourselves. I recommend measuring what they eat, whether you leave it out for them all day or time feed it. As long as you have a good grasp of what they're eating because if you want them to lose weight, for instance, the only way you can do that is by knowing how much they're eating and reducing it.

It tends to lean in that direction, just like human food does. You can do free feeding in a single-dog household successfully and have a lean dog. Sometimes even a multi-dog household can pull it off, but it's a lot more difficult to manage the more dogs you have. If you think about it, if they're free feeding, you have no idea who's eating what, or how much they're eating throughout the day. So there's no way to control their calories tightly. I am a big proponent of meal feeding, typically twice a day because that's most practical, and it keeps their metabolism going consistently throughout the day. That allows you to control exactly how much each pet is eating. You're using a measuring cup and working with your veterinarian to figure out how much to feed with the goal of feeding for an optimal body condition.

It can, and that too falls in the line of if your dog will just eat until the bowl's empty and you're keeping that bowl full all of the time. In that case, it will contribute to a higher calorie intake. Whereas if you're feeding set meals with a measured amount, then you know for a fact they're getting their daily requirement of calories, and they're not exceeding an excessive amount. Also, going back to the previous one, if everybody in your family is contributing, if you have little kids or some of us big kids in the house, I'm sure you have some of those that are giving food to your pet, keep that in mind when feeding them as well. If they are getting a copious amount of calories, something has to give. So make sure that there's a rule in the house that you're only giving a dedicated treat and nothing else to help control how much your pet is eating so you don't see their waistline expanding.