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Healthy Dog Diet
It is convenient for you to continue giving your puppy the same food he is used to, for a period of at least fifteen days. A proper diet from a very early age will prevent the appearance of deformations in your dog's anatomy. Two puppies from the same litter which have received different kinds of diets will become two completely different adults and the puppy which has been better fed will always be more beautiful and more robust. The servings a puppy should receive everyday depends on how old he is. Most of them start eating solid food when they are three or four weeks old. As a valid alternative, you can give your dog a dry product so that he can feed on after he has been weaned. Learning to eat can take longer; however, once they get the hang of it, it can be a satisfactory way of feeding your puppies, who, in their majority, will put on adequate weight. The period in which a dog grows the most is from the moment he is weaned until approximately twenty weeks of age. During this period, medium-sized dogs need approximately 3.5 kg of dry food to increase their weight in 1 kg. The bigger-sized breeds need a little less food and the smaller ones need more food during that period. If you give your dog canned food, you will need to increase the ration approximately threefold. Until the puppies are eight months old, they should have all the dry food they want. When the puppies are around eight weeks old, they will eat the most quantity of food in relation with the weight of their bodies than in any other moment of their lives. With some breeds, it can be up to 70 grams of substance per kilo of the puppy's weight. From one and a half months to four or five months of age, the dog will eat three times a day: once in the morning, once in the afternoon and once at night. In order to make digestion easier, preferably don't feed the dog the night meal right before the he goes to sleep. Starting from when the puppy is four months old and until he turns a year old, he should have two servings of food a day -- one in the morning and one at night -- gradually removing the afternoon meal he was used to. From one year on, the dog should only receive one meal a day which will be served to him, if possible, during the afternoon. But this schedule depends on what the dog is intended for. A guard dog should have his meal in the morning and sleep during the day to be awake and aware during the night. A hunting dog has to eat during the night so that he can be all set to go hunting in the morning. As a rule of thumb, dogs should have a peaceful place to eat. Try to put the dog in a fresh place where he can eat because too much heat can produce bad digestion. A small dog, from four to twelve weeks of age, should receive 50 or 100 grams of meat and 50 to 90 grams of vegetables per meal. These quantities should be gradually increased during the dog's growth.
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