Feeding

How to Feed Puppies

We all like to look after our dogs to the best of our ability, and feeding a puppy correctly is important to give it the very best start in life. For optimal growth and health, a balanced diet is necessary. This means the diet includes the right amounts of protein, carbohydrates, fat, vitamins, and minerals, in the right proportions.

Puppies need to take in proportionally more calories per pound of body weight than adult dogs do, because they need more energy to grow. Commercial puppy foods take this into account. It is very calorie dense, which means that it includes more calories per bowl, compared to adult dog food. .

Since puppies have little stomachs, they should be fed small meals regularly. This means three small meals a day up to twelve weeks of age, then reducing frequency to two meals a day. You can keep feeding your dog two meals a day throughout adulthood, or further reduce to one meal when he’s around 12 months old and close to fully grown.

You should feed your puppy according to the guidelines on the food packet. Overfeeding puppies can make them overweight. This can predispose to orthopedic problems such as hip dysplasia, and may lead to obesity later in life. It is undoubtedly easier to prevent your dog from getting overweight in the first place than it is to get rid of the excess weight later in life.

It is a good idea to base your puppy’s diet on quality commercial dog food, and then add extra things such as rice, pasta and raw bones. Remember to never feed your dog cooked bones, as these are dangerous and may splinter, damaging the gastrointestinal tract. When choosing a dog food, take a close look at the ingredient list. The top two or three ingredients on the list should be meat or meat protein. Dog foods which may be less expensive are higher in cereal, and therefore not as good for your pet.

Home cooked diets are possible, but it can be very hard to maintain nutritional balance. One of the best examples is calcium. A predominantly meat based diet can contain too little calcium, leading to poor bone density and increased risk of fractures. Conversely, adding too much calcium supplement to a diet can also lead to developmental orthopedic disease. It is very important to get the balance just right.

It is also important to choose a commercial dog food which is appropriate for the breed. For example, giant breed puppy food allows for slow steady growth. This helps to avoid orthopedic problems in your dog such as osteochondrosis dissecans which is often associated with rapid growth in large breeds of dog.

As puppies get older, their growth rate slows, and they can be switched to adult food when they’re close to maturity. This is usually around twelve months for most breeds, and eighteen months for giant breeds.

It is very important to choose the right dog food for your puppy, as the effects of poor nutrition can last a lifetime. Make sure that the food is both of high quality, nutritionally balanced and appropriate for the breed.

Amount Of Dog Food

Determining The Amount Of Dog Food Needed For Your Dog

The pet dog has the same nutritional needs as any other dog. The only difference is the reduced number of calories it uses because of the type of life a dog leads as a household pet. The house dog living exclusively indoors is probably one of the least active animals in the world. More inactive, even, than its owner.

Most of a house dog’s time is spent sleeping. Its greatest effort, in many instances, consists of a 10-foot walk from the back door three times a day for eliminations, and a 10-foot walk from the family room couch to its food bowl in the kitchen. As a consequence the house dog is the most overfed and suffers from the greatest overweight problems of all the house-pets.

The dog that spends most of its daylight activities outdoors, but comes in at night, has a higher energy need than the pet kept indoors constantly. Not only does it get more exercise, but it requires extra energy to maintain its body temperature during cooler weather outdoors. Even with such additional requirements it is not uncommon to find indoor/outdoor pets that are fed too much and are borderline overweights.

The dog that stays outdoors all of the time is the pet least likely to develop obesity. As an outdoor dog it enjoys the same, or more exercise as the indoors/outdoors dog. In addition, outdoor dogs have a considerably increased need for energy to maintain body heat.

This need for extra energy for body heat becomes especially high at night and in colder weather. In fact, there are occasional instances where outdoor dogs, when improperly fed, begin to appear just like the undernourished farm hounds of a past era of dog feeding.

Calculation: The quantity of food a house dog needs is determined by the same things that determine the amount of food any other dog eat, which is its optimum body weight and the caloric density of the food it eats. The amount is calculated in the same manner as for other dogs. Determine the number of calories a dog needs daily to maintain its optimum weight. Then divide that number by the number of calories in a pound of food you are feeding. The results will be the quantity of food you should feed, measured in pounds.

Dog Feeding Tips

Rule 1: A dog should be fed by the same person at every feeding. This rule is not nearly as important where a couple of house pets are being fed by several members of the same family, as it is where large numbers of dogs are being fed by numerous different kennel personnel.

It is particularly applicable where dogs are in strange environments such as boarding kennels, veterinary hospitals, or show arenas.

Dogs that have become accustomed to one feeder may exhibit all sorts of erratic eating behavior if that person is changed.

Rule 2: Every dog should have its own food and water container. This precaution is not only sound behavioral psychology, it also is just plain good hygiene.

It is especially wise to assign food bowls on an individual basis when your feeding containers are noticeably different from one another. Besides improved feeding technique, certain practical benefits are to be gained from following this rule.

In racing stables, for example, where maintenance of body weight is so important, feeding instructions can be written on the bottom or the side of each dog’s feeding container, right next to its name or number.

Rule 3: A dog should be fed in the same place every time it is fed. Whether it be the corner of the kitchen, beside the back-door steps, at the rear of a kennel run, or along the left-side wall of a cage, the site where the food container is placed should remain the same every day.

In fact, everything that’s done with the food container should be identical at each feeding. lf you use a push cart or wagon to carry the tub of food to the dogs, always use the same cart and tub.

lf you pre-fill food bowls in the diet kitchen and carry them on the cart, don’t decide one day to carry the tub of food on the cart and fill each bowl as you reach the dog.

It may have become boring to you, but to your dog it has become the way of life. A change only serves to disrupt his way of life and to create cause for insecurity.

Rule 4: No dog should ever have its food changed without a good reason. Contrary to popular opinion, dogs do not need a change in food from time to time to keep them from growing tired of the same food all the time.

Many dogs have lived normal, healthy lives by eating the same food throughout their entire lifetimes. In many instances where a dog owner thinks a dog has gotten sick and tired of a food, the dog has just gotten sick from the food.

Not so sick, perhaps, that it really showed, but sick enough to stop eating. When a dog food is deficient, it is not uncommon for a dog eating that food to lose its appetite. Of course, nutritional deficiencies are not the only thing that will cause a dog to lose its appetite.

Fats & Carbohydrates For Dogs

Animal Fats: While most animal fats contain just as many calories as vegetable oils, only two contain essential fatty acids in amounts sufficient to supply a dog’s needs. These are the fat of the pig, commonly called lard, and horse fat.

The tallow of beef and mutton should never be used as the sole source of energy for a dog because of their low content of essential fatty acids. Animal fats contain about 126 calories in every tablespoonful.

Cereal grains: One of the major sources of carbohydrates, both for dogs and man, is the cereal grains. The useful carbohydrate in these grains is predominantly starch. Starch can also be purchased in pure form, and contains about 29 calories per tablespoon, or about 464 calories per cup.

Other sources of carbohydrate energy from cereal grains can be obtained from dry and cooked breakfast cereals, boiled rice, hominy grits, corn meal, and in the milled form, such as flour. Cereal grain products should never constitute more than about 50 percent of the dry matter of a dog’s diet.

Potatoes: Except for the fact that potatoes have more water in them, the amount of carbohydrates in potatoes is almost the same as in the cereal grains. Potatoes can be used interchangeably with those cereals that are fed in the boiled state. Like cereals, potatoes should never constitute more than 50 percent of the dry matter of the diet.

Bread: As a source of carbohydrates in a diet, white or whole wheat bread ranks among the better ”natural” foods available to a dog feeder. It usually is fortified with vitamins and minerals, is palatable to most dogs, and is always available and inexpensive. Some dog owners who feed their pets natural ingredients insist that bread should be toasted before being fed to a dog.

While such a practice makes the slices easier to crumble and mix with the rest of the diet, the starches in bread have already been subjected to cooking and about all toasting does is to enhance the texture of the bread.

Specialty flour products: A carbohydrate source frequently overlooked by a dog owner is the specialty product made from flour noodles, macaroni, and spaghetti. These have an energy content comparable to other cereal grain products.

And, like rice and hot cereals, they have the advantage of being able to be added dry to a food, then being cooked after the water has been added. This gives the capability of mixing a large amount of dry food at one time, then adding water and cooking small amounts as it is needed.

Dog Nutrition

Eggs: Eggs for feeding dogs can be bought by the dozen in the grocery store, by the hundreds from hatcheries or by the thousands from egg ranches.

Regardless of how many or where they are obtained, an egg should never be fed to a dog raw. Raw egg whites react with the vitamin, biotin, and prevent a dog from using it. In fact, feeding raw egg whites is the exact way scientists produce experimental biotin deficiency in a laboratory.

Milk: Much controversy has raged over feeding milk to dogs.
Milk has been accessed of causing diarrhea and other digestive upsets. While it may produce these problems in large amounts, if milk is kept to about two ounces of fluid milk or two tablespoons of dry milk per pound of food, few problems will be encountered.

The value of the milk, when fed in proper amounts, exceeds the risk of upset. Milk supplies calcium and phosphorus in the proper ratio and amounts, a host of vitamins, and also a protein which approaches the value of whole egg.

Cottage cheese: Cottage cheese is little more than the major protein fraction of milk casein. It does not have the same value as the protein of whole milk because the lactoalbumin, normally present in whole milk, has been washed away in the whey. The value of the protein in cottage cheese compares favorably with that of horse meat.

Cottage cheese offers the dog feeder an inexpensive, readily available source of quality protein for his dog.

Cheese: Another dairy product made from casein is cheese.
Cheese, unlike cottage cheese, also contains a considerable amount of fat. The fat makes cheese a valuable source of energy as well as of protein. Because they are made as human foods, and are sold in competition with other human foods, cheeses are among the more expensive protein sources for feeding dogs. For dog feeders who wish to spend the extra money, cheese is a worthwhile consideration.

Fish: Fish is not commonly used in dietary formulations for dogs, but there is no logical reason to eliminate it from consideration as a protein source for a dog. Indeed, fish protein is one of the better proteins, for the money, that a dog feeder can use. Fish, too, should always be cooked before being fed.

In this case the heat destroys a chemical found in many fish that will destroy vitamin B1 (thiamine) if left unchanged.

Dog Nutrition

Food and Water Containers

No food should ever be fed to a dog unless that food is put into some type of a container. The practice of putting food on newspapers or directly on a cage floor or the ground serves no purpose except to contaminate the food from the surroundings.

This method also contaminates the surroundings from the food, draw flies, increase parasite transmission and soil the dog’s coat. The money, time and energy a dog owner thinks he is saving by such feeding practices are completely wiped out by the loss of the dog, the time spent to clean floors and combat insects, or the effort needed to put a food-soiled coat back into show condition.

Feeding Bowls: No feeding bowl should be used unless it meets the following criteria:
1) It is the correct size for the dog that is using the container.
2) It is designed so that it is easily washed, drained and dried, or can be thrown away after each use.
3) It is made from satisfactory materials.

Feeding containers are made from a large number of materials, some good and some bad. An ideal material from which a dog’s food container is made should:
1. Never be toxic to a dog. This includes the body of the feeding bowl, its coverings, and any paint, decals, printing or other decorations.
2. Capable of withstanding a reasonable amount of abuse from a dog’s teeth.
3. Made of a substance that is non-corrosive to dog foods, dog urine and the other substances to which a feeding container normally may be subjected.
4. Resistant to soaps, detergents, water, grease and disinfectant solutions.
5. Resistant to breakage, cracking or similar damage under normal wear and tear.
6. Reasonably priced.

A material that meets every one of these specifications can be quite difficult to find. However, there are four materials that meet enough to be considered as suitable for dog food containers. These are glass, pottery, plastic and metal.

Glass containers are the least suitable of the four. They are unfit for kennels or breeder operations. Their fragile nature makes them unsuitable. The feeding bowl used for one house dog usually is handled individually at each feeding, just as the family’s dishes and bowls are. Under such restricted conditions of handling, glass containers rarely are subject to breakage. And because of their low cost and attractive nature, glass feeding and watering bowls make satisfactory household food containers.

Fat Dog!

Obesity is the most common nutritional disease in American dogs today. It is the result of simply eating more calories than are burned. Dogs have a built-in protection against this disease, a control mechanism in their brains that satisfies their hunger after they have eaten enough calories to meet their daily energy needs. However, it is possible to upset this control mechanism.

By feeding the dog a food that is highly palatable, he will eat to satisfy his appetite and not his hunger. The only way to remove the excessive fat from a dog’s body is by reversing the way it was put on, which is feeding the dog fewer calories than he will burn for energy. When this is done, the dog’s body will burn up energy stored in his body to obtain what he needs.

Fat is the most efficient source of energy and will be used in the greatest amount whenever energy is needed. A reduction in caloric intake cannot be achieved by just cutting down the quantity of food you feed your dog. Drastic cuts in the quantity of food fed will only lead to deficiencies that pose an even greater threat to the dog than the obesity does which are deficiencies of proteins, vitamins and minerals. It will also make your dog ravenously hungry! Fats and carbohydrates that contain the most calories should be replaced by ingredients that are less digestible and lower in calories.

The diet of an overweight dog should not contain more than 1400 calories per pound of dry matter. This is approximately 1250 to 1300 calories per pound of dry food or 330 to 350 calories per pound of canned food. A more accurate and convenient way of obtaining a reducing diet is to use a dietary animal food specifically designed for that purpose. This food can be obtained from a vet. It contains 330 calories per pound and is balanced to provide the correct amount of other nutrients for the dog when fed at that caloric density. Whatever the food used, the quantity of it that should be fed has to be estimated.

Portion control is the only method of feeding that can be used during a weight reducing program. Treat or supplement should not be given during the reduction program. If a dog is more than 10 pounds overweight, (over his ideal body weight) begin your weight reducing program by feeding him only 2/3 the quantity calculated to maintain his desired weight. The full amount of food should be given once a reduction in weight begins to occur.

For dogs that are less than 10 lb overweight, begin with the full amount calculated. In dogs weighing less than 10 pounds, use the two-thirds guide for any dog that is more than 33% of his desired weight overweight. It may require several months or longer before a dog reaches his optimum weight. Do not expect your dog to lose the weight in just a few days.

Taking off weight too fast can be dangerous to a fat dog. Once optimum weight has been attained, most dogs will have to be kept on portion control feeding. Dogs that tend to get fat need to have their intake closely regulated to prevent them from gaining back the lost weight.

Fat Dog

Dog Diarrhea

In some dogs it is not unusual to notice a mild diarrhea following a change in food. This is particularly true in younger animals. In most instances it persists only until the dog’s intestinal tract adjusts to the new food. In rare instances the diarrhea resulting from a change in diet lasts longer and may precipitate more serious forms of diarrhea.

To prevent diarrhea from developing during a dietary change, make the change gradually. A gradual change allows the intestinal tract to make a slow transition from the ingredients and physical characteristics of one food to those of the other.

Should diarrhea develop despite the precautions taken, reduce the amount of food being fed by one-half for a day or two. If this fails to correct the upset stomach then return to feeding the old food until the stool is normal again. Should the addition of the new food a second time also precipitate diarrhea, it is probable that the new food does not agree with your dog. If a third food is available it may be best to try an alternative method rather than to continue to subject your dog to a food that fails to agree with it.