Dog Food Information that You need to know about

You do everything you can to maintain your own optimum health.

Doesn’t your best friend deserve the same?

Your dog is an active (rather the most active) member of your family and needs the same, if not more attention to health and nutrition as you do, to stay healthy, and livelonger.

After all it’s very easy to get lost in a big pet store that offers many types of Dog Food.

The seas of products that are offered today and aisle after aisle of dog food are very confusing and also time consuming.

However keeping your dog healthy need not be a career option for you. All we need to use is a little commonsense and good information regarding the breed and age of your dog.

Try this unique calculator that will help you understand how many calories your dog needs every day depending on things like the dog's age, weight, activity level etc., and will also help you determine how many cups of food you should be feeding your dog every day.

Let’s divide the dogs into two categories – small & adult.

For Small Dogs & Puppies

It has long been established and proven that small dogs have a different metabolism as compared to large dogs, due to physiologic effect of their body mass.

For example

A Great Dane weighing 100 pounds needs to consume about 23 calories per pound of body weight.

A Pomeranian weighing 6 pounds needs to consume 47 calories per pound of body weight every day-more than twice as much! As an owner of a small dog, you need to be certain that your dog’s energy needs are being satisfied.

Be sure to choose a diet that’s been formulated properly with optimal balance of highly digestible nutrients. Digestibility determines how much your dog can actually utilize each nutrient in a diet.

Puppies require almost twice as much dog food as adult dogs per pound of weight. To keep up their energy levels, they have to be fed as frequently as three to four times a day till they are six months of age.

Diet is always the key to raising your children or puppies. The diet should balanced, nutrient rich, should contain high levels of phosphorous and calcium and be highly digestible.

It should also contain high-quality proteins and should adhere to Association of American Feed Control Officials’ (AFFCO) procedures. This would ensure that the puppy develops strong bones, muscle and tissue.

For Adult Dogs

Your dog like you needs a combination of fats, carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins, minerals, and water in a balanced diet to meet their daily needs. A lot of dog food bags claim they are in themselves complete food.

This ends up as null if the nutrients cannot be absorbed by your dog’s system. Major companies take great care in this aspect by trying to provide the nutrients in an absorbable form.

Dog foods must also consist of mineral and vitamin supplements in a balanced form.

The proportions should be accurate so that they do not interfere with each other in your dogs system.

This would provide maximum benefit to you dog. If the food consists of one ingredient in overdose and the other in lower doses, it could have an adverse affect on your dog’s health.

Given below are some feeding tips to make chow time more pleasant:

• Always keep the food dish clean.
• Feed adult dogs twice a day to prevent hogging at one single meal and lessens the chance of your deep chested dog developing bloat or stomach torsion.
• Feeding Schedule should be relaxed so that your dog knows the mealtime but will not bother you if you are a little late.
• Keep your siblings away from your dog while feeding, so that he does not get insecure and feel a need to defend his food.
• Never let your dog have free access to food, lest they have constant activity in their digestive systems.
• Make sure your dog sits and has his food, in which case there is less chance of food spilling all over the floor.
• Never play with your dog with his dish, better to teach him manners instead.
• Leave the dish for 15 minutes so that he licks it clean.

The following are some other pages about Dog Food that you should read.

A Dog Grain Free Diet

A Grain Free Diet is the latest trend in dog foods. It is also known as dry kibble diets.

The grain free trend originated with raw diets as many proponents of raw food studied evolutionary dietary habits of our companions’ wild ancestors and decided that grains were unnecessary.

Dog Food - Do You Think About What You Feed Your Dog?

It is one of the biggest mistakes that we can make as pet owners is to believe that a Dog can eat whatever we eat.

This is probably a result of us integrating the pet into our family and considering the animal to be one of our own but this is a costly mistake.

Do You Know What the Best Food is for Your Dog?

Dogs like dry foods only if it is tasty and some dogs prefer only the best dog food that comes in a can.

The reason for such preference is that the moisture is about seventy to eighty per cent in canned food but in dry food, it is only about ten per cent

Subscribe to It's A Dog's Life - YOUR Dog's! , our monthly newsletter with information to help you keep your dog safe and healthy with some free Bonuses. Fill out the form below. You'll then receive an email asking you to confirm that you subscribed. And you'll always have the option to unsubscribe at the click of your mouse.

From Dog Food Information to Dog First Aid 101