Dog Nutrition

To maintain a healthy pet, you will need to feed a good diet. The best recommend would be a high quality, fixed formula complete dry diet. Many good brands do life stage diets now, all specifically designed for the different requirements your pet will need as they get older. The term ‘you are what you eat’ is very fitting when it comes to feeding your pet. If you feed a good quality food you will expect to see a good quality results!

A good high quality diet will optimise bone growth, development and maintenance, and also maintains a healthy skin and coat. The general rule is; the more expensive the diet the better quality it will be. Cheaper diets will be low quality, the ingredients used to make them will be low grade quality and will be of a low digestibility, which means only a small amount is nutritionally available for absorption and the rest becomes waste. So your pet will defecate more and you will need to feed a high quantity of the food to meet the correct nutritional requirements and so will end up spending more in the long run as the bag will run out quickly. A high quality diet often contains ‘human’ grade ingredients, meaning they would be good enough for us to eat, it will be highly digestible so less faeces will be produced and a lower quantity of the food will need to be fed to reach the required nutritional value and so the bag of food will last you longer than the same weight of a low grade food.

Good quality dog foods to choose from include:

Fixed formula means the bag of food you buy will contain exactly the same ingredients in exactly the same quantities every time you purchase it. If your pet is being fed a cheap low quality food, it is likely that it will not be fixed formula, and therefore if, for example, chicken was available one week and beef the next, this will be what was used in the food, so it will be different each time you buy it, don’t always assume if the bag says ‘chicken’ that is always what the food is made of, its often a very small percentage of chickem that is contained. We are seeing more and more food allergies these days, whether it presents as a skin complaint or a sensitive stomach. If you are feeding a fixed formula diet there is much less likelihood your pet will develop an allergy as they will not come into contact with other cereals or protein sources other than what is in their fixed formula diet.

A complete balanced diet means just that, it will contain the required levels of protein, carbohydrate, fat, vitamins and minerals that your pet needs to stay healthy. There is no need to add supplements! The diet should also be in biscuit form, this will prevent selective feeding. In cereal based or ‘colourful’ diets the pet is able to choose their favourite pieces and so leave the not so tasty bits, this can lead to dietary imbalances. Wet food is mostly made of water and so more food is needed to supply the correct nutritional value the pet requires.

Dry Dog Food

• - Easily Stored
• - Stays fresh for long period of time
• - Easily measured out for daily requirement
• - Doesn’t smell
• - Clean
• - Better for teeth

Wet Dog Food

• 70% water – large quantities of food needed to achieve nutritional requirement
• Expensive
• Cannot keep fresh
• Attracts flies in summer

• Adds to build up of tartar on teeth
  

Dog Treats

Pets do not require edible treats every day – these do not constitute a balanced diet. Do not substitute part of your pet's diet for treats as this can and will lead to dietary imbalances and obesity. Giving your pet treats every day is like giving a child a chocolate bar or hamburger everyday - which of course is just not good for them! To most pets a game, toy, grooming session, or cuddle is just as much a treat or reward as getting something tasty. Food treats should be saved for especially good behaviour, and used reservedly as training aids. As humans it is up to us to feed our pets correctly; quite often it is more our enjoyment of giving treats to our pets that makes us feel the pet will be upset if we do not give it to them, than it is the pet actually desiring the treat.

Will my dog get bored eating the same diet every day?
Eating is not a sociable thing for our pets; they eat to survive! They cannot become bored with a diet if they are unaware of others! We often look at things from our own point of view, that as we have so many choices then surely our pets should have too. If you give your pet choice i.e. feeding from your own plate, adding different flavours, or changing the food you are feeding a lot then your pet will become choosey, picky, and very difficult to manage. They will come to learn that if they don’t eat their food they might get some of yours, and then you have a very difficult situation to rectify.

Home Made Dog Diets

Some owners choose to make their own food for their pet; this can never be nutritionally balanced. You would need to spend huge amounts of time researching into specific needs nutritionally for your pet, which will obviously change as it gets older. You would also need to know in depth the nutritional content of different food items that you will need to use to prepare the food. For example: Meat is a poor source of calcium so should not be fed solely, feeding raw fish especially oily fish can lead to vitamin deficiencies. Eggs should always be cooked, and all other dairy products are a good source of calcium, protein & fat but many animals are lactose intolerant. Cereal and vegetables should not be fed raw but cooked to improve digestibility, as cats and dogs are carnivores their digestive tracts are not designed for digesting vegetables and so cannot be healthily maintained on them. You will without doubt have to add vitamin and mineral supplements. So preparing your pet's food in this way will take up large amounts of time and will cost you more money than buying a readily prepared food. There is so much research that goes into producing high quality balanced diets for pets these days which are commercially available, why waste time & money preparing your own?