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.

While more often than not I am commenting to dog owners that their pet is obese, there is a definite need for any information on getting weight up on a dog.

A hard keeper is exactly that: a dog that does not hold weight easily due to stress or hard work or high drive or whatever.  I have already discussed the choices to be made regarding the right dog food and the dangers of feeding a dog such as this a low calorie food. Now I am going to explain in more detail how to get the job done of putting weight back onto your working dog.

The first thing to do is examine your dog food’s ME, or metabolizable energy. If your food has less than 3900 kcal/kg, change foods to a high energy food, with at least 3900-4500 kcal/kg and around 450-550 kcal/cup.  If you need to call the manufacturer for this information, then do so. They are required to disclose the kcal data to the consumer.

Now that you hopefully have a decent quality high calorie food, you need to determine how much to feed the dog daily. Please do yourself a favor and use a measuring cup. Here is the rule: you increase the daily food intake slowly until your dog starts to get loose stools. Loose stools is a sign that you are overfeeding the dog. Then, you cut back until you get a firm stool. I know, this sounds goofy, but it’s the only way to know if you are feeding enough. There is no reliable weight-to-food gauge that I know of. I have seen eighty pound dogs absorb four cups and some that cannot. It is a matter of the individual dog’s metabolism.

If the dog lives primarily outside, this may take up to eight or ten weeks for you to see significant increase in the dog’s body weight. In extreme cases where the dog is simply moving around too much for the food to convert into fat and muscle tissue, you may need to crate the dog during this time period. I have seen dogs who cannot gain weight while in the kennel environment, who, when crated in the house for around a month or two, have gained close to five pounds, which is significant for a dog.

Remember, every dog is different, with different metabolisms and nutritional needs. Work with their diet and you will get them to an ideal weight.

Bob

Well, it’s time for an update to my post about dry dog food and the low calorie scam being perpetrated by some manufacturers and retailers.

Not being satisfied with my initial calls to those in charge, I once again contacted Sam’s Club customer service, in an attempt to voice my concerns about their food to someone in charge who would listen. I finally reached someone there who cared enough and he gave my number to the head of pet food sales and marketing for the entire Sam’s Club chain. Yes, the person who is in charge of the whole thing, from deciding what formula to tell its manufacturer to use to what it says on the bag, called me to let me know he was interested in what I had to say.

We had an excellent conversation. He is new to the position, apparently had no idea about the recent changes to its Performance formula and appeared to actually want to do something about it. Both of us agreed on many points, as he, ironically, had worked for Mars for quite some time before taking on his new position.

The conclusion we came to at the end of our talk was that there is a disagreement from manufacturers as to what constitutes a ‘performance’ dog food: Protein/Fat Content or Calories Per Kilogram. I am pretty sure he recognizes and knows that calories(high metabolizable energy and caloric density) is the key to maintaining a healthy dog.

I am hoping he can make a difference from his position in the very near future. Meanwhile, I am no longer using or recommending Member’s Mark Exceed dog food for my own dogs and pups. If you have been using this food, contact me and I will help you find a better replacement.

Keep your eyes on the packaging of Member’s Mark Performance to see if there is a change in either packaging or ingredients, or both.

After all, your dog’s health should be important to these businesses, too!

Best,
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!