Diet Advice

What you feed your dog is an important decision. Our vets and nurses are here to help.

 

At the cheaper end of the market the foods contain a high proportion of cereal with limited meat content.

 

Dogs digest cereal poorly so pets on these diets tend to produce a lot of faeces and a fair amount of wind! Diets at the premium end of the market have set recipes and are based on human grade foodstuff.

 

Quality ingredients and a higher meat content mean that these diets tend to be more expensive, but they are consistently more digestible with the result that you have to feed less food and far less waste products are produced.

 

There are two main types of dog food available: moist and dried.

Dried food, provided that it is the crunchy type that does not require soaking, can help to clean the surfaces of teeth and is usually less expensive than tinned or pouched varieties. It also tends to be better value as it keeps far better once opened.

 

A puppy’s nutritional needs are completely different from an adult dog’s because a puppy needs relatively more energy, protein, calcium and phosphorus.

 

To ensure a puppy’s proper development these nutrients must be provided in specific proportions. A puppy MUST have a diet that meets these needs, adult food is simply not good enough.

 

Suitable puppy food should be fed until the pup is fully-grown – for dogs the size of great Danes this can mean until 18 months of age! Puppies grow very quickly and so it is very important that they are fed correctly from an early age.

 

It is very difficult to create a balanced home-made diet for a puppy, ensuring the correct balance of protein to carbohydrate and of calcium to phosphorus.

 

It is far simpler for you to put your faith in a properly formulated, quality, commercial dog food. Your dog will grow whatever you feed it but they may suffer more problems than an animal fed a balanced diet.

 

Increasingly research is showing that many of the joint problems suffered by young dogs are related to their diet. Home produced diets can be created for adult dogs, though the available recipes are somewhat limited.

 

However for clients concerned about the available commercial diets we will try to offer guidance to allow them to create a satisfactory homemade diet.