I would love to get some opinions on feeding times. Here's my situation, I work mornings 2-3 days a week and swing shift 2-3 days a week. I am usually home by 10:30, 11pm at the latest and go to work at 2. On the days that I work swing, I have been able to come home and feed Lola, or have had a friend do it. Both of these may not be options very soon. She is fine for 8-9 hours occasionally and on these days I make sure she gets extra exercise.

So, my question is, can I feed her at 11pm a few days a week? I usually stay up until at least midnight on days I have to work late. I have had to feed her this late a couple of times and she doesn't seem to be affected at all, and I don't think I want to move to a once a day feeding. She's 14 months old. I know labs are really flexible, she deals with my crazy schedule well, but I have been able to feed her on a fairly regular schedule of 6-8am and 6-8pm. It would be 2-3 days max per week. I am not saying this is what I will do, if I have to pay someone to come feed her I will, but just hoping someone else is in my situation and has some feedback.

Right now im working afternoons...3pm to 11:18pm.
When we get up in the morning at 9:30 tucker gets fed.
Then at 12pm he gets fed.
My mom sometimes comes by around 8pm, so he would get half a cup then.
Then when i get home at midnight, he gets his other half a cup.

Now, next week i go on days...6am to 330pm.
How thatll work out i dont know...during the summer i was on day and i was feeding him at 430am and hopefully my SO will feed him at 12pm and then later in the night at 7pm ill feed him.

I'm hoping that happens, but who knows.
Tucker seems to be fine with the shifting and takes it very easily.

I think they're really adaptable. I am thinking she will be fine. She has always been on 2 feedings and I only feed her a cup and a third each meal I am thinking she would be just fine whenever I feed her.

I guess on those days I could hold off feeding her in the morning until around 10.

Rachael, I think they adapt fairly well. Sophie eats anywhere between 6am -10am morning meal and 5:30-9pm evening meal. It really depends on the day and what the schedule is like. On days I know she may have an early meal but late dinner, I leave a stuffed kong with her to keep her tummy somewhat full. No problems here!

I know she will be fine...maybe I will leave her with a kong or give her a snack before I leave.

I think giving her a snack, especially a stuffed kong will help her get thru the day.

We also have a chaotic schedule and Holly has 2 meals a day but not at the same time each day.

She should be fine. Our guys usually eat breakfast between 8-9, and dinner around 6. There have been several times with our older ones when we were going to be out all day and not home until 10 or 11 at night and couldn't get a neighbor to come feed them and they were fine until we got home (they have a doggie door into a fenced yard so didn't need to be let out - I wouldn't leave them alone that long on a regular basis but once every so often doesn't seem to bother them).

It's probably more important to keep a puppy on a schedule so that the potty training thing follows easily.

Why feeding your dog a consistent diet
"on time" is a bad idea…
(This article is also available as a simple
text file version)

Carnivores, like our dogs, are not meant to be fed on time. And they are not built to get the same food every time they eat. They are genetically programmed for variation - both in food composition and feeding time.

Unfortunately, our dogs are also very fast to adjust to a regular feeding schedule and to a specific food composition. This can create big trouble when you suddenly start deviating from the well-established schedule.You might see vomiting of bile and other signs of a significant decrease in wellness by simply feeding something different - or feeding at a different time.

Conditioning to a predictable feeding schedule
If you feed your dog every day at, say, 8 PM, then all organs in the body's gastrointestinal system will program themselves to start their parts of the digestion process at 8 PM. Whether or not you feed! (Pavlov's famous experiments about 100 years ago are the classic proof…)

So, if you suddenly introduce a fast day in the middle of a long tradition of consistent feeding at predictable times, you are doomed to create a problem for your dog! What should the dog do with all those excess digestive juices produced by the stomach at the programmed time? There is only one way: vomit them out of the system! Those juices contain strong chemicals. Without any food to neutralize them, they can hurt the stomach by starting digestive processes of the stomach tissue!

http://k9joy.com/dogarticles/dogfood01conditioning.pdf

On my days off, I'm normally up by 10/11 am and I let Duke out to do his business, take him on a 15 minute walk then bring him back for brunch. I then will normally repeat the process anywhere between 4:30-5:00 pm for dinner. When I work, my mom will normally feed him at 1p and I am normally home in order to give him order.

On weekdays Mya is pretty much fed around the same time, morning and night. But on the weekends it can get a bit crazy depending on our schedules and what we have going on, sometimes we are gone during meal times. Mya has had no problem adjusting to that. Sometimes when we get home late around 11 PM and put food in her bowl, she won't even touch it until the morning! And she has access to it, she just isn't a very scheduled eater, doesn't always eat food as soon as it hits her bowl.

I liked that article from Doppler, makes sense to me. Lola did fine the 2 days that I fed her late. I figured she would. She always eats immediately and of course is ALWAYS starving. I have such a crazy schedule that I don't really think she even notices. It definitely didn't mess with her potty routine so that's good. Thanks for all the advice.