Determining The Food Your Dog Does Best On

[Guest donatella]

1. Do you have to feed tons of food or hardly anything in order to keep your dog at a decent weight? If you have to shovel food into the dog or its constantly hungry (yeah I know that's nearly all dogs all the time) I'd say the fat content of the diet needs tweaking up or down.

I'm always amazed at how little I feed my dogs. Everytime I put the food into their bowl I think surely they need more than that, but I look at them and they're all in beautiful condition, except Tag who IMO is a bit fat, and I suspect that is because he's been stealing eggs.

2. Is your dog at the vets a fair bit for minor skin irritations, ear or other infections or hot spots? If so, I'd say that avoiding some types of food in the diet is worth trying. A lot of dogs are gluten intolerant and changing the diet can help with these issues.

I took Kibah to the vet last week for an eye problem and asked them when she was last in. According to their records, 2001!!!! She's going to be 13 at the end of this week. I almost never bath my dogs, their skin and coats are lovely.

3. What's going on at the back end? Does your dog produce firm stools? Or are they large mounds of mousse like poo (see this quite a bit) and are they foul smelling? I'd say a diet that sees your dog produce masses of soft smelly stools on a regular basis isn't ideal.

Poos are normal apart from sometimes I see lots of seed from stolen chook food. Again

4. Does your dog smell? Teeth, anal glands, general odour? Diet can be frequent cause of these issues and making sure that your dog gets a decent amount of tooth cleaning via its diet and a decent amount of fibre can help with some of these issues.

My dogs dont smell although as they are all aging now, I have started to have issues with teeth getting dirty. I suspect it is something to do with changing mouth chemistry, I've never had a problem with their teeth before, and even now it's only the 3 older girls, the boys teeth are still immaculate.

5. Does your dog LIKE its food? Some dogs are just picky but what you feed should be enjoyed by the dog. If you're constantly having to spice up the main part of your dog's diet with additives, I'd say its time to try something else.

My dogs love their food. I've also started making it for a friends dogs too and they love it as well.

Thoughts??

I would like to try feeding raw but have never got myself organised enough to do it.

This made me :laugh: