What Is The Best Food For My Dog?
It is known that our pets need fruits, vegetables, rice and meat, since they are omnivorous animals. Although their diet must be very varied, the rhythm of working life that their owners lead today, prevents us from cooking the food that our friends need.
To complement the feeding of the dogs, there are many preparations on the market. These will provide that part of the necessary nutrition to our dogs that we cannot cook, and thus have a complete and balanced diet.
These foods, called ‘balanced’ if they are of good quality, provide all the necessary elements, such as proteins, vitamins, etc. But what is the best food?
Food preparations
Although these preparations are very complete, and each time they are better prepared to provide the highest quality, we should always integrate as many natural foods into our pet’s diet.
If we proceed to analyze the so-called ‘dog food’, the first step will be to know the components that make it up, beyond choosing the best-known or most expensive brand.
The best food: meat proteins
With regard to the different products, we must bear in mind that the dog descends from the wolf and that it is a carnivorous animal. Therefore, their diet has to be made up mostly of meat or proteins of a quality similar to meat.
When we find cereals and we think that it will also be a good contribution to our dogs, the reality is not like that. Cereals do not contribute anything to the diet of our dogs.
The labeling of the products that we purchase for our animals must be as accurate as possible. Consider, for example, that if the label speaks of ‘chicken’, it may be offal, and not premium quality meat. It is best to select those products that have accurate and detailed labels.
Amount of food according to stages
The first question is to know how often you should give your dog the best food. As a general rule, up to four months he will eat four times a day, three times from four to eight months, twice until the year and a half and, after that age, once a day.
Food, both natural and from preparations that we buy on the market, is not the same for all stages of the animal’s life. There are some specific foods for puppies, others for large dogs, for medium and small dogs, etc.
The proportion of our pet’s food will depend on many variables: its size, the physical activity it develops, whether it burns a lot of calories or is rather home and sedentary, etc.
Many specialists do not advise homemade food for dogs. They claim that it is usually not a proportionate diet, but rather is too rich in carbohydrates. Experts are inclined to eat ‘balanced’ preparations.
In the case of deciding on homemade food, we must ensure that it is never left over from our food. It must be a menu prepared specifically for them, according to their peculiarities.
If we have decided to give our pet some homemade food, we will try to make it of quality. As we can see, not leftovers, but a balanced portion, as if it were another member of the household.
Pregnancies
In the event that there is a pregnant dog at home, it is important to take care of the future mother’s diet. It will be with little extra food in the first five or six weeks of gestation, because fetuses do not grow much at this stage. Consider that most of the growth will take place in the last three weeks.
For the care of our dog, we will increase the energy intake by approximately 15% each week. The same happens in the lactation period, when the animal needs to feed properly to give the puppies the nutrients they need.
