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My 2 dogs are each fed twice a day.

They are each given 1/4 can of dog food with every feeding: 1/2 a can a day per dog; 1 can consumed total, daily.

To prevent me from having to manage opening a new can in the mornings, I open a new can of dog food every night, give the 2 dogs 1/2 a can at room temperature, and put the leftover 1/2 can, covered, in the fridge. In the morning, I split the (cold) leftover 1/2 with their morning meals.

Recently, I somehow switched the sequence (I went out of town and the sitter thought it was half-a-can per dog per feeding, which explained the vomiting dog): I'm opening a new can in the morning, quartering it, distributing it, then putting the leftover half in the fridge for the evening.

I want to go back to opening a can in the evening and giving them the rest in the morning, as the opening and quartering sequence is more time consuming and I'd rather do that in the evening, but I don't want to always give them cold canned food.

How can I switch to opening and quartering the can in the evening without discarding any food, or always having to keep a day-old half-can of cold leftover food in the fridge?

For the purposes of the changeover / transition to evening openings:

  • I'm OK with having more than one can open at a time, but I prefer to minimize open cans.
  • I'm OK with giving one dog a cold quarter and one dog a room-temperature quarter.
  • The dogs cannot skip a meal.
  • The dogs cannot be overfed.
    • If necessary, I will concede to giving any dog up to 3/8 of a can for a feeding, but only once per dog per day (too much and we get a vomiting dog).
  • I need to eventually end up with only 1/2 a can in the fridge, opened during the evening.

I feel like I can do this if given any thought, but I've had a long weekend and whenever I put my mind to it, I draw a blank.

JoshDM
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    Move to a new home halfway around the world? (Take a daytime flight after the morning meal.) – Steve Kass May 27 '14 at 01:01
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    [Corrected regarding over/under feeding] Given your last edit, you can do this by giving one or both of your dogs 37.5% of a can for a total of four dog-meals. Simply open a new can when you need one, and spread out the overfeeding across as long a period as you want. After 4 such bigger meals, you'll be where you want to be. – Steve Kass May 27 '14 at 01:30
  • Yes, that works. – David K May 27 '14 at 01:32
  • This was an interesting question when it was asked four years ago, but I think not worth "cleaning up". When you do that you bump it to the front page, and then lots of people spend time looking at it that they might have preferred to spend on new questions. In general, avoid cosmetic edits on old questions. – Ethan Bolker May 23 '18 at 16:08
  • It's already got a selected answer; why would they bother? – JoshDM May 23 '18 at 16:17

1 Answers1

2

In order to do it, the dogs have to either skip a meal (forbidden), or else eat extra (allowed in limited quantities). Therefore, per the requirements of the question, we are going to give the dogs extra food in order to use up the can.

Days:

  1. Morning: open 1 can, feed 0.75 cans (37.5% per dog), store 0.25 cans. Evening: feed 0.25 can to dog 1, open 1 can, feed 0.25 can to dog 2, store 0.75 cans.
  2. Morning: feed 0.75 cans (37.5% per dog), store 0 cans. Evening: open 1 can, feed 0.5 cans, store 0.5 cans... done! :)
FundThmCalculus
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