My dog must have missed the memo. He'll come over at EXACTLY 6 o'clock (to the minute) to remind you about dinner if it hasn't yet been served. He used to do the same in the morning but eventually we reached a truce on the concept of sleeping in from time to time.

That's why you never feed them at an exact time.

We have a time frame of roughly 3 hours in which we feed the dog.

That way we can have a nice dinner too, go to a musical etc. pp.

A friend of ours made the same mistake as you. His dog becomes a real diva after 6pm, if she hasn't eaten

I tried doing that with my dogs, but it led to them being annoyingly clingy as their general dinner time approached because they knew they could be fed suddenly at any time.

So I switched to using a phone alarm that marks when it's time to feed the dogs. I can easily change the time it rings to adjust their meal times, and they remain patient because they know that they won't be fed until they hear that sound.

Are you implying he's conditioned me?

Out of curiosity we've tried to figure out if there's some external cue he's relying on outside of a very accurate internal 'clock', and haven't found any. He's consistent even in the face of timezone changes and travel across the country (and other mundane tricks that'd eliminate stimulus like daylight cues), different environments / homes (ruling out equipment / building / neighbourhood noises), and different humans (in case his usual companions unwittingly broadcast hints).

I'm forced to the conclusion he swallowed a Rolex at some point.

My own schedule isn't particularly routine otherwise, so it's actually not an unwelcome anchor. He does understand and give up after a couple attempts if you tell him 'later' or have an obvious reason for the delay. He's intent, but not impolite.

We left him with a friend once for a few days who feeds their own dog an hour earlier. The discovery that 5 o'clock dinnertime can be a thing completely rocked his world. He tried to share this revolutionary breakthrough with us but with limited success.

Wolves can eat 20lbs of meat in one meal. They’re hunters that eat their fill when food is present because there’s no guarantee they’ll catch prey later. Not really a reasonable comparison to a domesticated animal that’s not designed for feast/famine living.