In 1991 I received my first Leader Dog, a beautiful black lab named Remmington. For years she guided me through downtown Chicago, negotiating trains, busses, and traffic with ease. I depended on her for my commute; if she was sick, I couldn't go to work. In addition, we developed a bond that is rarely seen between owner and pet. So, for logistic and personal reasons, I never wanted to see her ill.
One morning, she wouldn't eat her breakfast, which is very unusual for her, or any other lab for that matter. In addition, I heard strange gurgling sounds emanating from her intestines. There was no need to place my ear next to her abdomen, the noises were clearly audible from several meters away. "What has she eaten now?" I asked myself. There's all sorts of junk on the sidewalks of Chicago and its public conveyances, and even the best trained dog will sometimes nibble on something at nose level. I walked her around for a while and waited. Just as I was about to call the vet the noises subsided, and she began to perk up. Finally she ate her breakfast and was right as rain. "I'm glad that's over." I thought as we went about our usual routine. "She's learned her lesson; she won't eat that again."
A couple months later the same thing happened. She presented the same symptoms, and in a few hours she was fine. A couple weeks later it happened again, this time on a Sunday. Remmington had been in my home and under my care for the previous 36 hours, yet somehow she got into something that upset her digestion. My wife checked the yard thoroughly, but found nothing amiss. We couldn't figure it out.
Over the next few months these intestinal "attacks" became more frequent and more severe. Sometimes Remmington was down for the entire day. Her vet, who is the best in the business, had never seen anything like it. He ran some tests for parasites and the like, but found nothing. We were all baffled.
Since I have learned to think in terms of diet, I tried several different brands of dog food. We tried foods without artificial colors, without preservatives, without corn, without wheat, and so on, all to no avail. I even gave her distilled water instead of tap water. Finally I spotted a temporal pattern. Most (though not all) attacks began in the morning, when she first woke up. What happened during the night to trigger an attack? Like most dogs, Remmington ate once a day, at breakfast, plus a few doggy treats during the day. So what happened during the night? Absolutely nothing -- and that's the point. Remmington didn't eat from 6 P.M. to 6 A.M. Was that significant?
As an experiment I served half her food in the morning and half in the evening. The attacks virtually disappeared. Over the next few weeks I learned, through trial and error, that eleven hours was her limit. In other words, Remmington could go ten hours, waking or sleeping, between meals, but if you waited eleven hours, she became very sick. Neither the vet nor I have heard of a case like this before or since. Yet it is not my imagination or a false pattern drawn from a statistically insignificant data set. For 6 years the 11-hour rule kept her healthy, and every time I forgot to feed her, the disorder returned.
For most people, when to eat is far less important than what to eat, but there are exceptions. If you suffer from diabetes or hypoglycemia, you know that small, regularly spaced meals are a must. Those following the Zone Diet (which will be described in a future article) also keep track of when they eat, though the constraints are not as rigid. For the most part, we should pay attention to what we eat, or what we avoid. But if you are keeping a food diary, tracking foods and symptoms, you should also log the times. For a small minority, this information is critical.