Feeding Prepared Dog Food and Puppy Food

July 7th, 2009 by Ezio

Tip! Have yourself retested every couple of years, or sooner depending on the recommendations of your naturopath as food sensitivities can change.

If you have decided that you will feed your dog or puppy prepared dog food or prepared puppy food, then your next decision is what type of food should you be feeding your puppy? You will need to do some research on the prepared puppy foods available if you decide not to pursue feeding puppy a raw food meal.

Become a label reader. The higher priced puppy foods will usually come from a company that is or has conducted extensive research on providing the best nutritional food to your puppy. So a rule of thumb is that the inexpensive stuff is not going to be as good as the more expensive puppy foods.

Tip! All dogs need to eat. Food is necessary to survival and dogs are hard-wired to work for food.

Do not buy any puppy food or dog food that lists a starch or sugar in the first four ingredients. You want a premium puppy food that lists a protein source as one of the first two ingredients. (As a note based on recent studies into human nutrition, do not have that source be soy-based.)

Tip! Plan your shopping. Saving on your grocery bill isn’t just about cheap food.

Providing carbohydrates in the form of green vegetables when puppy feeding is quite all right. Even raw foods advocates add some non-starchy vegetables to the dog food they mix. So this is an ingredient you may expect to find on some puppy food labels. However, animal nutritionists have found dogs derive no nutrtional value from carbs such as sugar and starches even if many dogs foods are 50% or better carbohydrates. Carbs are less expensive than protein sources, generally, and are used as fillers in dog good.

Tip! There are more convenience foods available. Convenience foods costs more per serving and pound.

As canned puppy and dog food can be as much as 75% water, we are mostly discussing dry puppy food mixes. Canned preparations are not cheap so you are paying a lot for water. Best to use a premium dry puppy food and add to it.

A suggested menu is the dry puppy food with a little canned dog food, which is mostly meat, and moistened with a little warm water. Usually, canned puppy food will have enough fat for the puppy as well. A couple times a week, you might replace the meat with some cottage cheese or a cooked egg. Some trainers who have raised dogs for a very long time even suggest adding a tablespoon of yogurt with live culture a couple times a week.

Less than six months, feed three times a day when puppy feeding and then go down to two times a day. Give your puppy about 15 minutes to eat his food and then remove and refrigerate it. At the next feeding warm it up before feeding puppy. The 15 minutes goes to your puppy training efforts as you can read in other articles.

Tip! The company should be able to intelligently explain what they are doing in terms of processing, packaging, product preservation and prevention of food-borne pathogens. It is one thing to simply put a certain ingredient into a food, quite another to protect it until it is consumed.

As your puppy develops over the next few months up to his first birthday when he should start on dog food as appropriate for him, keep an eye on him. Be aware of over feeding your puppy and beware of him growing too fast. It is possible for a puppy to be growing too fast and this can impact his health, so double check his growth with your veterinarian.

Tip! Never shop for food when hungry. Eat a meal first and you’ll save on food you don’t buy.

Visit our Puppy Training website at http://ezpuppytraining.com/ for a free course on “Welcoming Your New Puppy Home and Puppy Training”. Find more puppy training and care tips at our website ezpuppytraining.com.