Specifics of canine nutrition
When you get yourself a puppy (usually aged at around two months), the right way of feeding it is to give the puppy special foods that have the appropriate composition and structure for the best chewing by still infirm jaws.
One can often come across the viewpoint that the granules of food given to puppies, especially of small breeds, should be soaked in water and then fed in soft form. Afterwards, it becomes a regular procedure.
Savory puppy foods are suitable for the first weaning starting from six weeks. You can keep soaking the granules in water for some time, until the pet’s digestion system gets adapted to the fact that food can be not only soft but also hard. In a couple of weeks, you should stop doing it – let the puppy gnaw at croquettes.
When chewing, the dog’s jaw muscles work well and blood circulation in gums improves. Primary teeth are replaced with permanent ones in due time, and afterwards, the dogs which gnaw at croquettes instead of eating them softened have much fewer problems with the oral cavity.
You can use training treats right from the start of the training process, but make sure to choose the same source of protein as in food.
Although it may vary, the period of developing digestion processes takes up to first six months of life. During this period, it is important not to overburden the stomach and not to experiment with varying foods or treats.
It’s not a secret that the first training processes begin on the puppy’s first day in your home. But how can you encourage your pet? You should choose treats that have the same protein base as dry food. In the case of Savory, go for something turkey- or chicken-based.
The puppy’s digestion system has already adapted itself to that food. Therefore, other ferments would be needed to digest new sources of protein, and that could cause serious stress to the puppy’s tender body. To avoid digestion disorders, just stick to this simple rule.
A dog will gladly eat as much food as the bowl contains. You can add more food in there, and the dog will do it again. Doesn’t get enough food? Is it normal?
Unlike cats, dogs indeed have this interesting feature. They have a very specific sense of hunger, and they often eat everything they see, especially after physical activity, when they need to restore their energy.
It is important from the very beginning to strictly regulate the amount of food you give to your dog as one meal.
On the contrary, a dog does not have an appetite, and you need to constantly change foods to make the dog eat something.
Constantly changing foods, especially if they are of different classes, is bad for health. The dog’s digestion system will constantly try to get adapted to new foods, becoming unable to fully absorb nutrients. Constant changes in the balance of protein and carbohydrates have accumulative effect, and produce adverse impact on the pet. General health, activity, skin condition, comfortable digestion and excretion – all these processes will gradually begin to malfunction.
When a pet eventually switches to full nutrition and the owner does not see changes, you should recall how many foods were changed in the past year. A month or two must pass before all allergens are removed from blood, detoxification is completed and nutrients from the new food are accumulated, and only then would you be able to assess the result.
Speaking about encouraging the dog to eat, a long walk or intensive training before eating would stir up an appetite, so you won’t recognize your “capricious” doggie when it will begin enthusiastically eating what it was hardly touching the day before.
A dog eats more, or less, than the norm stated in nutrition tables
The nutrition table contains figures for a statistical average dog of its age and weight. You have to understand that these figures may vary depending on activity, climate and individual needs.
First of all, lifestyle. A dog spending little time outdoors, staying at home the whole day and waiting for the owner to come back, would probably eat less than a norm, because it doesn’t have where to spend a lot of calories. Dogs that move a lot, take long walks, get busy with something outdoors, prepare for dog shows and the like, spend a lot of energy and would eat more than their low-active comrades. It’s also normal.
In the summertime, all pets eat less. In hot weather, dogs do not move a lot to avoid overheating, and therefore, they don’t need much energy. In winter, on the contrary, most calories are spent on keeping the body warm. It especially concerns pets that live outside the house or spend a lot of time outdoors. Therefore, the ration during the cold season will increase. Also, dogs often feel the change of air humidity and atmospheric pressure, and during the periods in-between seasons they could lose an appetite from time to time. If you take your dog to a veterinarian for regular checkups, don’t worry – as soon as the weather improves, this problem will go away.
The individual factor is also very important. Within the same family, there could be more active puppies with a better appetite, and also, more passive ones, eating less food and worse gaining weight. Dogs of the same breed may have different speed of metabolism, differently develop and eat food. The reason is also genetic.
Also, you should not forget about the periods of heightened physiological need, when a dog could eat more than usually. This is a period of pregnancy and lactation, when nutrients are spent, first of all, on development of puppies and on feeding them, and only then would they go to the mother’s body. These also include the periods of recovery and rehabilitation, when the body spends all efforts on restoration of vigor and needs more energy than usual.
As you see, there could be so many different factors bearing upon the quantity of food eaten during the day. Therefore, you should always listen to your pet, learn to feel and understand them, and that would help you find answers to many questions and explanations for many aspects of pet care.
How many times a day should you feed your dog, and is it important to be chronologically pedantic in this regard?
As soon as you get a puppy at home, usually starting from the age of two months, you should begin with five meals a day in equal quantities. When the puppy becomes 6-8 months old, you may gradually switch to feeding twice a day. It is important to maintain the same regime not only to adapt digestion processes to biorhythms but also for training purposes. It will make it much easier to teach the puppy to go outside, because they usually want to relieve themselves after a meal. As for adult dogs, it will be easier for them to get used to the time you feed them – for example, at 20:00, after you’re back from work, so that they won’t start fooling around early or whining, waiting for you to get home. Also, teaching the dog to eat at a particular breakfast time will save you some precious morning sleep, making your coexistence with your pet comfortable. On the contrary, if you don’t keep the same feeding time you’ll be suffering from excessive attention and demands of your pet. Therefore, feeding regime can also solve many problems of misunderstanding, as far as your dog is concerned.
When is it better to feed a pet – before or after walking it?
Here’s a very important point: you should not walk your dog and actively play with it when the animal’s stomach is full. You have two options here: first a walk and then food, or let your dog have some half an hour of rest after eating, and then go for a walk.
If a dog of small or medium breed starts to run and jump on the full stomach, it could get nausea. As for large breeds, things may get even worse. A too large amount of food in the stomach swells up under action from gastric acid and water the dog drank, and increases in weight. During an activity, a heavy stomach may twist, blocking the inlet from the esophagus and the outlet to the small intestine. In that case, the food mass begins to ferment, emitting a large quantity of gas and triggering intoxication of the body. Noticing it right away is almost impossible. When the pet’s owner gets back home from work, they will see the pet in a very bad condition, when every hour counts. Therefore, to avoid negative experience you should maintain not only the right feeding regime but also the ratio of food intakes to walks or physical activity.