Allie's hungry!!!
 

I'm off for the summer and our schedules are all out of wack. Allie still wakes up at 5-530 barking for breakfast and dinner around the same time. I buy the primal 8oz patties and i give her 1/4 in am & 1/4 in pm. 4 oz total a day. She weighs 8lbs. In between I will give some banana,apple, cherrios, a sweet potato chew. But not everyday. Maybe 3-4 x a week. These past few nites she is asking for food now at 1130. I'm still awake watching TV. Should I give her more food at meal times or spread it out throughout the day. I won't be able to do this when school starts. According to food instructions she's getting the right amount. She is not overweight nor do I want her to be. But if she's hungry....I just gave her some green beans and a couple of tablespoons of mashed sweet potato. Now she's content. No worse than making pancakes for my 14 yo son at midnight when he is hungry, right ;)

What time does Allie get dinner? I wasn't sure if you meant she got breakfast at 5:30 AM and dinner at 5:30 PM or what exactly. But I would give her a later dinner like at 6:30 or 7...I'm always starving when I eat an early dinner and stay up late! And you should probably not feed her just because she is barking at you for breakfast or dinner. Don't let her train you like that unless you enjoy waking up at 5 AM haha Toki used to try to wake us up at 3 or 4 in the morning for food and play time so I put the kibosh on that! But yeah, I would not reward barking by providing a meal (wait until she becomes quiet and give her the meal a little later...obviously we don't want them to think they're gonna starve!)

Maybe you could slightly increase the bulk of her food by adding something like green beans or other chopped veggies to her raw. Toki gets around 2 oz of raw for breakfast and it sure doesn't seem like very much to me! So I try to add low-calorie fillers like green beans, carrot shreds, or sometimes bits of sweet potato. In the afternoon, I put down some grain-free kibble which she doesn't eat all at once and finishes off around 7:30 or 8 PM so she doesn't get ravenously hungry between meals.

And I agree with Oscar's momma about a mid-day meal...you might even leave out a little bit of high quality kibble (unless you only want to feed raw) out during the day so that Allie can snack on it.

I feed Primal, too; but am finding that the suggested amounts on the bag do not satisfy mine, either. I would either add more per meal, or add a mid day meal. :)

thanks for the replies, She was picky when it came to kibble ( my fault for offering things with it), that is why I started on the raw. I am always afraid that if I start to "add" things to her food she will stop eating the regular food. I am going to try adding some veggies with her pm meal, nothing too enticing that she would prefer that over her food. A mid day meal will not be possible once I go back to work in 3 weeks..
I really do not mind her waking me up , I like to get up early, otherwise I feel like I waste my day by sleeping. She is my personal alarm clock, never have to worry about over sleeping and being late for work!

Jaeger gets 1/8 to 1/4 c. kibble at 5:30a (or whenever we wake up) and 5pm, and I give him veggies or fruit an noonish.

Sometimes at night he'll herd me into the kitchen because he's still hungry-if he's calm about it, I usually give him a little something once a night.