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.

It’s been a year since I began researching dry dog food to find out for myself exactly how this type of food works within the digestive systems of working dogs (Rottweilers and German Shepherds, to be specific).

Well, although I am not a canine food science ‘expert’, I am an expert at what works and certainly very good at observing the obvious as regards my own animals. Here are the results of one year of observation regarding dry dog food:

1. The kcals per kg and kcals per cup are vital to the viable nutrition of the canine. Using this page from a vet supply web site gave me the initial information necessary to begin research and determine how many kcals were needed for active working dogs.

2. Ingredients alone do not determine the caloric content and usable food value of dry kibble. In October of 2010, I had five underweight dogs in my kennel, despite being fed ample amounts of a supposed ‘high performance’ dog food, with chicken as the first ingredient. Since switching to a calorie-dense food with a less fashionable first ingredient (chicken by product meal), every one of those dogs has gained back weight, using the same or lower amounts of kibble per day. So, it really does not matter how much ‘deboned chicken’ or ‘wild salmon’ is thrown into some of these foods, the bottom line is that all of that mush has to result in a calorie dense food that the dog can convert into usable fuel for growth, maintenance and viability. My rule of thumb is that the food must contain at least 400 kcals per cup to do the job.

3. Calorie dense foods are vital to canine reproductive systems and milk production. Prior to switching foods, the loss of newborn pups from mothers fed a lower calorie food was at or around 35% per litter without exception.  Unsuccessful breedings were commonplace. Lack of adequate colostrum and milk may also have resulted in lowered immune systems and more difficulty with puppy growth, but these are not provable with the data to hand. The bottom line is that since switching to a calorie dense food, the newborn loss has reduced to 0%-20% per litter.

4. Calorie dense foods are vital to new puppy growth at weaning. I have observed that pups fed a high calorie diet develop stronger immune systems and experience more stable growth than those feeding on lower calorie diets. Weaning pups on high calorie puppy food had zero ramp up time. This means that before, it would take three or four days for pups to start eating the ‘high performance, all life stages’ kibble. Now, they begin eating immediately, first day, and never look back. Wormings and other preventative meds also appear to work more completely than before. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I don’t think so.

Well, that about wraps it up. If you are a dog owner who is simply status conscious, you will continue to feed your dog low calorie, high cost salmon and bison free range organic kibble, since that is what your vet or the sales rep at the local pet store told you to feed.  If you are a cheap dog owner, you may continue to feed your dog Field Trial or whatever corn based stuff you can buy at the local carry out. Maybe those foods work for you, and that’s fine. I’m not here to revolutionize the dog food industry.

However, if you have a dog that is not doing well on his kibble, for any reason, including, but not limited to:

not gaining or maintaining weight,

having skin or coat issues,

immune system issues,

reproductive issues,

recurring soft tissue injuries,

lack of energy,

constantly hungry resulting in overfeeding, resulting in loose stools and a host of other issues,

then maybe you might consider looking into what’s really in your dog’s food. I hope this has helped.

I was speaking with someone last week about how much they feed their dog each day. Incidentally, the dog was obese. Here was their answer: He’s hungry all the time, so I let him eat as much as he wants.

When I stopped laughing, I told my friend the following things about feeding his dog:

1. All healthy dogs are hungry all the time. This doesn’t mean they are underfed or undernourished. Stop making believe your dog is a little person trapped inside a dog’s body.
2. Dogs do not understand the concepts of obesity, poor health, indigestion, etc. If you put a forty pound bag of dog food in front of a healthy dog, it would eat until it bloated and died. There may be exceptions to that, but I doubt it.
3. Free feeding is the worst form of poor obedience training imaginable. Here, the dog is doing what it pleases, when it pleases. Good luck on that NOT spilling over into the rest of the dog’s life.
4. People who show Rottweilers for a living insist that the dogs look ‘thick’ in the loins. It’s no secret that show dogs are over fed. (This is the same as human beauty pageants, where contestants starve themselves to ‘look good’ for the judges.) While this may look nice in the ring, it may not be the healthiest condition for your pet. Look down at your dog from directly above your dog. Can you see where his rib cage ends and his loins begin? If the answer is ‘no’ and he looks like a fat sausage, then your dog is overweight and needs to be fed less food.

If your dog is obese, try cutting back on his food one quarter cup a day for a month. I guarantee you the dog will not starve to death. Trust me on this one.

Bob

Sometimes we can trust the people who make the food that our dogs eat and other times, we cannot. In this post, I am going to describe to you one of those times when you can’t trust the dog food manufacturer.

First, let me say that it’s not that they are out to kill our dogs. I believe that it is simply that they spend more time calculating their bottom line to really care about what it does to the end consumer (your dog). This absolutely will corrupt their thinking on the subject and result in, well, let me cut to the chase.

For the past seven years, I have been feeding my dogs with what was, at the time I began using it, a high quality dog food, designed for working and sporting dogs. The name: Member’s Mark Exceed Chicken and Rice PERFORMANCE Dog Food, available only at Sam’s Club. The first ingredient has always been chicken and it boasts a 30% protein and 20% fat formula. Sounds pretty good, right? Well, little did I know that Mars, Inc, the current manufacturer of Exceed (not the original company subcontracted by Sam’s) as well as the popular brand, Nutro, saw fit to ‘tweak’ the food. Their PR line is that they ‘are duplicating the formula for Eukanuba Performance’ dog food. Okay, sounds good on paper.

Then, why, may I ask, were some of my dogs literally starving? I own two very nice German Shepherds who were feeding four cups of Exceed a day and not gaining one ounce of weight. They were underweight and nothing I did helped.

It was then that I decided to take a look at the bag and found that they had slyly lowered the fat to 16% while I wasn’t looking. Okay, lower fat might not be that bad, but I had an idea that wasn’t all to the story. So I started some research on line. I found this web page from Drs Foster and Smith’s site.

You should read it all the way through. It defines what the term ‘Metabolizable Energy’ means in the dog food world and even shows you how to calculate it for the food you are currently using, to see how many calories per kg your dog is receiving. Metabolizable Energy is what a dog needs to grow and maintain weight and energy. Low calorie foods are like eating popcorn, for a dog. To make things worse, some dog food companies disclose the calorie count and some don’t because the FDA doesn’t require them to do so.

Well, I then did a test of my own. I purchased a decent high energy dog food made by Southern States, which disclosed it’s calorie count as 3970 kcal/kg (around 400 kcal/cup). I weighed a measured cup of this food on a food scale and did the same with a cup of Exceed (which had a not surprising low calorie count of around 3500 kcal/kg per my calculations). The less expensive food actually weighed 1.5 ounces more per measured cup than the Exceed.

With this knowledge, I decided to call Mars and inquire about the actual calorie count per cup. Lo and Behold, the Mars rep sheepishly told me that the Exceed food had 327 kcal/cup. In other words, I have been feeding my dogs, who are all active and require high calorie food to maintain body weight and muscle mass, with a dog food that is, at best, suitable for ten year old lap dogs.

Do you know what has more calories per cup than Exceed? Purina Dog Chow. Call Purina’s help line if you don’t believe me.

Needless to say, I have stopped using Exceed and have moved on to a mix of high calorie foods from Diamond and Southern States. If you are one of the people that I recommended Exceed to in the past, I humbly apologize. I promise I won’t make that mistake again.

To those of you who are not satisfied with your current dog food, I recommend you get ALL of the nutritional facts from the manufacturer and decide what to do from there. It’s not just about ingredients or protein/fat percentages any more. The dog food companies know that this is the only thing consumers look at on a bag, so they are able to work around it for their benefit, not yours.

I will be keeping up my account of how the dogs are doing with their new diet as well as continuing to explain more about dog foods in future posts. Until then, LET THE BUYER BEWARE!

I wanted to add a few tips on dog feeding as I believe  myths and false information  exist on this subject.

So, to set the record straight once again, you control how much you feed your Rottie pup or adult. Most people know that free feeding leads to obesity, period. Now, that being said, you can even do controlled feedings on your dog using high quality kibble and still have them become overweight by giving them too much. This is a simple datum: Overfeeding leads to Overweight dogs and puppies.

I can only guess that some owners don’t want their dog to be underweight, so they actually over feed the dog to compensate for what they feel is a “thin” dog (Note: A lean dog is not a thin dog. There is a difference). The mistaken idea here, I guess, is that a lean dog doesn’t look like someone’s mental picture of a Rottweiler.

How do you know your dog or pup is underweight? Well, we should begin by looking at the ribcage of the animal in question. If you cannot SEE his ribcage, then he is not underweight. I repeat, if you cannot see his ribcage (by this, I mean actually see the ribs showing through his coat), then he is not underweight. Now, granted, the dog may not look like the fat Rottweiler on someone’s web site or the one owned by the guy down the street.  The fact remains that a dog can be lean and not be underweight.

Now, add to this the fact that pups, especially, are going through different growth stages and you see where this misunderstanding may show itself. For example, there is a stage in a pup’s life where they are leaner than when they were 8 weeks old,  as they are better utilizing the nutrients in their food to grow bone and muscle tissue. To some, this looks “thin” and is overcompensated for with more food. Not a good idea. Just let the pup grow at its natural pace, increase food intake gradually, keep an eye on things and everything will turn out fine.

Lean dogs are more athletic, energetic and healthier than obese dogs. This is a fact, not my opinion.  If you were to go to Europe, where owners actually work their dogs in all kinds of sports, you would see that their dogs are lean and in shape.

Remember, it takes up to four years for a Rottweiler to fully physically mature. Please be patient. Why screw it up with speed feeding and over feeding?

Best,

Bob

I received a great email from Sandy in Virginia, about a dietary handling she did on Riesling (King/Gwen). Here is an excerpt from her message:

“I just wanted to drop you a quick note to share my latest “dog-owner-proud-moment”.  I have recently switched Riesling over to a grain free food, Orijen Adult.  I’m not sure if you’re familiar with it but I know how seriously you take the dogs diet so I had to share my latest discovery with you.  I need you to know how much I absolutely love it!!  It is 42% protein & 16% fat.

She’s had some problems with her ears (build up & nasty yeast stuff, ewww) and any rottweiler owner can relate to the gas these pups have, hehe.  Since the switch, no ear troubles, the gas is almost non-existent and she never has loose stools anymore.  She has adjusted to this new food with such great ease, it’s unbelievebale.  The cost is comparable to any other high-quality food, which makes it even better.  I think I remember you doing a blog post some time ago regarding food choices which is why I wanted to drop you a line.” – Sandy.

The link to the manufacturer’s site is:

http://www.orijen.ca/orijen/products/adult.aspx

The ingredients are exceptionally good and with that great protein to fat ratio, it warrants looking into if you have any doubts about the food you are currently feeding your dog, or if they have similar issues to Riesling’s .  A lot of the high end foods just do not deliver in the protein/fat content and in my opinion, spending a bunch of money on low fat, low protein food is just a waste.

And no, I am not a sales rep for Orijen!!

Best,

Bob

Okay, Here is another topic that provides me with endless hours of conversation with owners, fellow breeders and vets. Dog food.

I have friends who are obsessed with proper diet for dogs and spend fifty bucks a bag for stuff with wild salmon pee in it. I know other owners who feed their dogs Ol’ Roy. And then, there’s everything in between.

Just today, I was looking a bag of the food I feed my dogs, and by the way, this is by no means crap dog food. It’s a high protein, high fat (30%/20%) kibble with chicken as the first ingredient. Not bad stuff. But, I got to thinking and thought to myself, wow, that only adds up to 50%!! What is the other half made of? I held onto this thought and spoke to my vet about it and he is researching this brain teaser and will get back to me with some credible explanation as to what could possibly make up twenty pounds of filler in a 40 lb bag! I actually can’t wait for his answer. Meanwhile, I kind of figured out what some of the stuff is. You know, the rice, oil, water, beet pulp, vitamins and minerals all take up some room there. But geez, twenty pounds!

I will definitely get back on this when I get more info, but for now, let’s assume that the fifty percent filler is necessary for the dog’s health. Okay. Really, since I’ve been feeding my dogs one of the better foods on the market, I am now wondering about the dog foods that claim to help with certain ailments or weight loss or being old – this really bothers me because I have had to handle pet owners on more than one occasion who use low fat senior dog food to keep their ten year old dog’s weight down, then don’t understand it when the dog develops skin problems. Well, I think anyone can understand that if you practically eliminate fat from a diet your skin will dry up. How about trying to REDUCE THE AMOUNT OF FOOD YOUR DOG TAKES IN!!!!!!

I have the same gripe with these “Large Breed” formulas that all of the major dog food companies produce. Why? Because somebody said somewhere once that the other foods make the large breeds grow too fast. That is a bunch of crap. It’s because idiots out there were speed feeding large dogs with large amounts of food and not giving them exercise and that is why that got too big too fast. How about controlling the amount of food your dog eats – try not to free feed, for example. Oh, the dog food companies won’t advise that, because they will make much more dough selling some low protein crap that large breed owners will feel less guilty about feeding their dogs.

I know, there are so many dog foods on the market, and so much attention being paid to quality due to the recent pet food recalls and such that some dog owners are in kind of a stunned state and will pretty much buy whatever their vet or the local pet store tells them to feed their dog. Not all of this is bad advice, but you must understand that the breeder many times knows what to feed that particular breed, if he’s been doing this for a while and has gone through the gamut of available foods, diets and so on for at least a few years.

I can give some advice here that may help the dog owner make at least a more educated guess as to what food to give his or her dog. It is derived from my own trial and error and is not meant to be the ultimate guide, but at least to help in deciding.

1. Do not free feed your dog.

Although this point isn’t going to help you decide on a dog food, I had to include it in this list. Mostly because people do not understand why you should not free feed your dogs. It’s just plain lazy, first of all, to dump a crapload of food in a giant bowl and have your dog eat all day long. Secondly, and more important, when you free feed your dog, you are not going to be able to detect when that dog is ill or has something wrong with it physically. The first sign of ill health in a dog is food refusal. So, if you dump food in a bowl all day, the dog will eventually show a sharp decline in food drive and may not even be interested when you first give him food, since he has all damn day to eat the stuff. If your dog is sick, you will lose precious hours not knowing this until it is perhaps too late, since he will not be showing any sharp appetite loss as a change from his normal behavior. Free feeding is also the cause of an obedience issue. The dog eats whenever he wants – no discipline here. I don’t know about those of you out there who have breeds other than working breeds, but lack of discipline in a working breed is asking for trouble. You give the dog ten minutes with the food and whatever he doesn’t eat, you pick up and he can have eight hours later at his second feeding. This isn’t some underdeveloped country and you don’t have to worry that your pooch will starve to death. He won’t – trust me. He might even start wanting to eat that food that you spend fifty bucks a bag for down at PetCo.

2. Actually read the ingredients on the bag of dog food.

Okay, just take a look at what’s in the food you’re feeding your dog or the food you want to change to. Really, the most important ingredient is the first ingredient. What is it? Chicken by product meal, Chicken meal, Meat and Bone Meal, Poultry by product meal, Rendered meat, Road Kill, Horses. The last two are ingredients you won’t really see on a dog food bag, but I’ve heard stories………..

Anyway, what you want to have with your first ingredient is the closest thing to real food as possible. I like real chicken or at worst chicken meal, as I have found that chicken is more palatable and more digestible than meat based foods. At least for Rottweilers. After that, just see that you don’t have any preservatives, like BHA or BHT. The food should then be naturally preserved with vitamin E or some other oil. Okay, that’s about it on the ingredients. Other than that, I think all of the anal retentives who insist on only giving their dog the best dry kibble made are so full of themselves that I think they do it just so they can tell their friends how much they pay for a bag of dog food. Here is the deal with all dry kibble – all of it is processed. That means that to make it into kibble, the manufacturer has to cook all of the ingredients together in a big vat until all of it rendered down into a mush and then cool it down and extrude it through these holes to make the paste into strings of paste which is further cooled down and cut into equal sized pieces which is what kibble is. If you are believing that all of this high end buffalo meat and salmon anus and whatever is going to withstand 2000 degrees of cooking and still be chock full of nutrition, then there is a bridge in Brooklyn you may be interested in.

Look here, read the bag of that designer food you just paid sixty bucks for and you will see that all of the vitamins and minerals are added in as ingredients AFTER the ‘fillet of free range avocado’. Don’t you see that they cook all of the nutrition out and then slam it back in? So, really, are you getting a better quality kibble? I don’t think so.

The chicken or chicken meal is pretty good for the dog. Look, have you ever seen what your dog eats when it’s not presented in a bowl? Feces, both dog and horse. Dead things. Grass and other weeds. Garbage, both yours and your neighbors. Do I make myself clear?

3. Pay attention to the Protein and Fat percentages

This is another overlooked item in dog food. As I said earlier, I feed my dogs a 30% protein and 20% fat as that is what keeps them trim and active and healthy,etc. I do not go for the large breed formulas as they are for people who think large breeds have eating disorders. The dog food companies know that pet owners anthropomorphize their pets, which means ‘to ascribe human characteristics to’. So, they prey on the guilty pet owner and sell stuff like ‘Large Breed Puppy’, ‘Senior Formula’, ‘Low Fat Weight Control Formula’, like they’re prescribing some kind of medication. Well, let me tell you, dog food companies are not vets and even if they were, these ridiculous formulas do nothing at best and at worst contribute to lowered levels of fat and protein with higher levels of carbs and other nonessential crap in the dog’s diet.

Dogs need protein and fat to convert into energy and vital muscle tissue and bone growth. Unless you are keeping your dog in a box, he will burn this stuff up pretty quickly and he needs more protein and fat to convert into more energy and tissue. Giving him ten pounds of corn meal a day is the equivalent to feeding your kids ten pounds of corn chips a day. If your dog is eating a food with mostly corn meal and fillers, do not be surprised if he is obese.

I personally would not go below 26% protein and 16% fat for a working breed, with chicken or chicken meal as the first ingredient. I guarantee you that the dog will not gain excess weight, unless you are free feeding him fifteen pounds of food a day!

4. Get word of mouth recommendations and always judge results based on what you see with your own dog.
I really feel that if you cross check your research with actual results from pet or kennel owners who do not have a vested interest in you buying the dog food, then you may get actual feedback that will help you with your decision. Try to stay within the breed you own or plan to own, as different breeds have different dietary issues. German Shepherds, for example, are sometimes very hard keepers and their owners may go through all kinds of trial and error before finding the right dog food that helps their dogs gain and maintain weight. Although I do believe that this should be looked at on an individual basis, there may be some good information to get from others who have the same breed of dog.

The ultimate test, however, is with your own dog. After you have done the research and have made your decision, buy a bag and put your dog through the entire bag and really watch him or her for the next few weeks. Note any weight gain or loss and any energy or allergy issues, condition of the coat, eyes, and yes, the condition of the stool (is it hard, soft, massive or compact – how is your dog digesting this stuff). The last item is very important as that will tell you if the food is being assimilated properly. If not, you may need to try another food, and so on. Eventually and hopefully sooner rather than later, you will find the right dog food for your dog.

Good luck!

Bob