Dog Training Guidelines 

Your Source Of Dog Training Tips & Guidelines 

Your dog is a very important part of your life, and you want to make sure she is fed a healthy food.  However, with the choices offered today, how do you know you are choosing the right dog food?

First off, you must remember that with the multitude of dog food choices today, you won't find one single food that is the best for each dog.  There isn't a single food out there that will give each dog the brightest eyes, the most energy, the shiniest coat and the best digestion.  Dogs are very individualistic just like people.  This means that you could feed a group of dogs a brand of well-formulated dog food and find that most of them do well on it, some wouldn't do so great, and a few dogs may get some gastrointestinal upset.  Luckily, there are a great variety when choosing the right dog food, and it is alright to try several of them to see which one works the best for your dog.

Consider a dog food that is appropriate for the stage of life that you dog is in.  A puppy shouldn't eat an adult food as she will not get the right amount of calories, vitamins, protein and minerals that are needed for proper growth.  An adult dog that eats puppy food is more likely to become overweight.  An older dog may need a senior food which contains fewer calories and is easily digested.  When it comes to a dog’s nutrition, one size definitely does not fit all.

People wonder if dry food, semi-moist or canned food should be fed to their dog.  This answer really depends upon your dog, but dry food is most often recommended.

When choosing the right food remember, it must contain high-quality ingredients.  When you try to cut costs on dog food, you will find that the cheaper varieties are made from inexpensive ingredients that are not digested as well and do not provide the highest nutritional values.  These cheaper foods contain lower-grade proteins and lower energy values.  Remember, feeding these cheaper dog foods will require feeding larger quantities of the cheaper food in order to provide your dog with the same nutrition as a small amount of premium food.  Therefore, economy foods may cost you more in the long run.

While choosing the right dog food, you can begin by looking at the list of ingredients on the label.  By law, pet foods must list their ingredients by their weight.  Look for meat, egg, fish, or some kind of fish meal or meat meal as the first or second ingredient.  Meat, eggs and fish have a much higher percentage of protein in the form of amino acids.

Second, look at the Guaranteed Analysis on the back of the dog food bag.  This is a chart which lists the percentages of the various ingredients that are contained in the food.

When you have done your comparison shopping and have chosen a well-formulated dog food, make sure that you allow plenty of time for your dog to make the switch from the food she is presently eating to the replacement food.  A sudden change in dog food may lead to an intestinal upset.  In order to avoid these problems, slowly switch over to the replacement food over the course of a week to ten days.  Begin by mixing 25% of the replacement food to 75% of the old food, and feed your dog that mixture for at least three days.  If everything goes well, give 50% of each kind of food for the next three days and then after that give 75% of the replacement food and 25% of the old food for three days.  By this time, your pet should be ready to eat just the replacement food.

After you feel that you have done all that you could to ensure that the dog food you have chosen is nutritionally sound, take a look at your dog after she has been on the new dog food for about a month. Bright eyes, a good body condition, a shiny coat and good energy will tell you that you are doing a fine job with your dog’s nutritional needs.