The above blog shares great information that may save your dog's life when you go out into the field either training or hunting hard.
I have been told by professional sporting dog trainers that they only feed the dogs once a day in the late afternoon. I never knew why until I read the article. Here is a brief except: The whole article is well worth reading.
"Feeding: When hunting dog people sit down together to talk about conditioning their dogs, they will almost always be thinking and talking about an exercise regimen that will result in the degree of cardiopulmonary fitness and muscular strength that their dogs must have in order to be good, strong hunters. However, there is another aspect to conditioning that is mostly “flying under the radar”, that few people know about, and which is almost never discussed. That aspect involves conditioning dogs so as to maintain large liver glycogen reserves, and to become primarily dependent upon those reserves as an energy source, and as a source of glucose for maintaining normal blood glucose concentrations. Ideally, a conditioning and feeding program for a hunting dog should seek to achieve the following end point objective: The dog should have achieved sufficient physical strength and cardiopulmonary and metabolic fitness that it is able run and hunt industriously for the entire length of the hunt, and be able accomplish this on an empty stomach.
It is generally recommended that hunting dogs be fed once each day, in late afternoon or early evening. This practice, which essentially starves your dog for 24 hours after each feeding, makes it IMPOSSIBLE for your dog to rely entirely on glucose entering the blood stream from the gastrointestinal tract for maintenance of normal blood glucose levels. As a result, your dog is FORCED to gradually increase its liver glycogen reserves, and adjust to using those reserves as the primary source of glucose for maintaining normal blood glucose levels."
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