Bob's Dog Blog

Okay, now some more insights regarding the feeding of your dog, whether pup or adult.

I have found that some puppy owners may be over feeding their pups. Their idea is that the pup is growing and needs all of this extra food to survive. So, I get reports of three month olds being fed three or four cups of high calorie, high protein food per day. Now, I did an experiment with some pups, litter mates of these other placed puppies. I fed them two measured cups per day, same food. After side checking, I found the pups I was feeding less food to were growing at roughly the same pace as the other pups.

My conclusion? That there is a threshold in feeding dogs, beyond which no appreciable gain occurs for the animal. The same is true for adults. If I feed an adult male of mine beyond his usual four cups cups of kibble daily, he will not benefit any differently. After the four cups, the remaining food is almost complete waste = zero nutritional benefit.

As a human, you may feel better, less guilty or whatever your particular fetish is regarding feeding your dogs. But the fact remains that there is a limit to what your dog can digest in a given day. If he is underweight, for sure start to slowly increase the amount of feed. But if it starts to get loose or excessive stools, you are wasting (no pun here) food and endangering the dog’s GI tract with excess proteins and fats that cannot possibly be digested.

Now, feeding a dog or pup a nutrient-dense food requires less volume of food, due to the increase in nutrients per cup of food. In other words, a cup of nutrient-dense food weighs more than a food that has lower calories. So, it follows that  you can feed the pup or adult less food per serving and get a better result. Read my other posts on dog food and visit this web page  to understand what Metabolizable Energy is all about (or search for Metabolizable  Energy) and it will help quite a bit in how you feed your pup or adult dog.