Like, I just was thinking about how lots of pet species will just eat as much food as you give them to the point of making themselves sick, and keeping them at a healthy weight requires not giving them access to too much food. Obviously some humans have problems with this, but imagine how bad things would be if everyone were basically psychologically incapable of not eating food when we had access to it even when we’d had enough, given our dramatically higher access to food due to agriculture.
My dog is almost two. She decided one day when she was about 6 months old that she was going to be a free feeder. Was such a quick change. One day, she is excited as could be to get food and scarf it all down. The next, she’d only eat about half of her helping and then the rest later in the day. As I type this, I hear her eating a bit now.
It wasn’t a huge deal since my previous dogs had been free feeders. I wasn’t planning to do that with her, but it works.
This becomes a problem when you have more than one though
I’d free feed then, most likely. I have had multiple dogs before and free fed. Never had an issue other than sometimes you introduce a new puppy to it and that first day or two they overeat before realizing hey this stuff is always here.
This current dog, I told the vet she did that and he just shrugged and said some prefer to eat small amounts throughout the day rather than the twice a day I was adjusting to after three times a day.