Eating or sleeping?
Which one would you say is more important?
I explain. Last night, at his dinner time, Kuma was sound asleep. He was sleeping so deeply I felt sorry to wake him up, and decided to wait a bit to see i he would on his own. He didn't, so I though I might just as well skip a meal and give him breakfast in the morning. Caue dinner would mean, having to take him out to poop, and the little guy was just sleeping as a log...
Even knowing(and Nat being concerned about it) the skipping a meal thing might blow up on my face, I went on with it. Of course, at around 2am he was starting to get hungry and restless. He managed to hol it until 5.25am. By that time I thought it to be criminal to make him wait any longer, but it still was raining outside. So I gave him his food, but instead of taking him outside, i put newspaper down in the kitchen, so he could poop. He ate and went straight for th newspaper!!Missed his aim by an inch or so, I think it's worth a 9, heheh... To pee he lost his aim a bit more, but still he did it on the same spot, after I removed the previous present. Now, the good thing came after, when he went on his own to his improvised toilet (several pieces of newspaper in between the doors of our bathrooms) to poop! And with perfect aim this time!
Sorry about the long post, but with all of this I meant to ask what would you have done in my situation, wake him up to eat and maintain the schedule (although his schedule is still starting, since he's still getting used to us) or let him sleep if he feels he needs it? It kinda of blew up in my face this time, cause i couldn't take him out after eating at 5am...
Comments
I have two thoughts on this one:
1) With a large breed, it is probably better to keep him slimmer than fatter. So skipping a meal will probably not kill him, but you need to make sure he gets enough food to grow (obviously).
2) I think it is more important to keep him on a strict schedule than to let him sleep. The schedule will help him learn the routine and therefore be potty trained much faster.
So, I would not stress about him missing a meal, but I would not make a habit of it since you will be better off sticking to a schedule in the long run.
Hope that helps. :c)
Yeah, I've been thinking about this one too. My current thought is that waking him to feed is probably the way to go. There are two reasons, the first is what Brad mentioned. Getting him on a schedule is important for his mental stability and for his potty training. The second is that, as Jessica once said so eloquently, growing is hard work. It requires a lot of energy and solid nutrition will enable that. If he's really tired, he'll go back to sleep after eating. It is probably more important to keep him well fed.
That being said, I agree with Brad's first point as well. It is always a good idea to keep younger dogs slim. Skipping meals is not the way to do it though. Keeping them slim by monitoring the quantity of food they intake and making sure they get enough exercise and playtime is a much better way to go.
Just my $0.02.
Yep, I agree with you guys and Kuma seems to agree too. Today at lunch, he was sleeping too, but after what happened last night, I decided to wake him up. He woke up, ate, went out to poop, got back and went to sleep.
Of course I agree that it is better to keep him slim from now on. He's a fatty, but it's all baby fat, and so it is ok, for now. But I do need to start watching it, cause his joints will thank me later on.
Stiil on the food note; today at dinner I decided to start the gradual change from the Purina ProPlan(I think) Silvia gave me, to the Acana Large Puppy I want to give him. And that seems to be a slight problem. The Acana kibble isprobably 4/5 times larger than the Purina. So he eats a lot slower (which might actually be good), and he takes it out one by one and stays chewing it while laying down. Also, everytime he takes one out, he jumps up and down, like a kid in a candy store.Now, I probably put too much Acana, because it was the first time he was trying it, but he ate 15 pieces of kibble or so, and just quit. Not even when I corrected myself, and the relative amounts, he went back to eating. And, for the last two times of Purina alone, he left food on the bowl and that never happened before (yes I know I didn't feed him that many times yet). I have to keep an eye out for this, to see if it's just a passing thing, or he might be on to something here.
And because he didn't want to eat, and started nodding off to sleep, I took the bowl away. Now let's see if he wakes up in the middle of the night, to eat. Right now, he's sleeping half under the sofa bed in the study, where I have been sleeping since he got here.
I'd say eating over sleeping...here's why. Last year, Kurt and I rescued a bird that fell out of it's nest. I feed Heckel every two hours, sometimes sooner because he would chirp. One night, I fell asleep early, which meant he missed his 10 o'clock feeding. I woke up the next morning at around 5am, but Heckel wouldn't eat. He died a few hours later
Obviously, a dog has a bigger stomach and could survive skipping a meal, but the point is when you're still growing and using tons of energy when awake, it's very important for your body not to skip that meal.
We're really lucky with Mika and Keigo. We can leave kibble out all day long. They eat when they're hungry. I am, however, going to start feeding them some good raw and cooked food. My schedule might change next week, so I need to figure out a new meal plan and schedule for the dogs.