Cat Vs. Dog Nutrition

leapoffaith03

leapoffaith03

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Hi, all, I'm a long time lurker of this forum and know you guys can help me out with this.

My beloved Sam crossed over onto the Rainbow Bridge a couple weeks ago and my husband and I miss him terribly. :rbheart: His entire life he suffered from IBD and I had to watch his diet like a hawk. I was always a huge proponent of a species appropriate diet and NEVER fed kibble and had grain free high quality canned on,y (natures variety instinct). The last few years of his life he ate nothing but Rad Cat raw.

Jump to now, my husband and I adopted an adorable 5 month old lab/hound puppy (33 lbs) from the local rescue shelter. After having Sam for 13 years and having the wet food is the best to avoid long term health issues mantra in my head for so long, I need some advice on how to feed this puppy. Is kibble just as bad for dogs as it is for cats health wise? I'm reading conflicting opinions. Should I be considering feeding her a canned only diet or is that not as important for dogs? I'm not interested in raw right now but probably will consider it as she gets into adulthood. Bear with me, I know this is a kitty forum, but I know you guys love all animals and also have dogs- any advice would be great, thank you. :)
 
LTS3

LTS3

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You might have better luck asking on a dog forum. Dogster.com has a pretty good forum. I'm sure there are others.

Dogs aren't obligate carnivores liek cats are so you can pretty much feed them anything. Canned food is likely better for a dog's health in much the same way it is for cats. Dry can be fed but you'd probably want to avoid too many grains.

Here are some web sites with info about dog nutrition and food choices:

http://www.dogfoodproject.com/

http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/

http://www.doberdogs.com/menu.html

http://dogaware.com/diet/index.html#commercial

http://thebark.com/content/canine-nutrition-basics

http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/banr/miscellaneous/dog_nutrition_final_fix.pdf
 
Kat0121

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leapoffaith03 said:
Hi, all, I'm a long time lurker of this forum and know you guys can help me out with this.

My beloved Sam crossed over onto the Rainbow Bridge a couple weeks ago and my husband and I miss him terribly.
His entire life he suffered from IBD and I had to watch his diet like a hawk. I was always a huge proponent of a species appropriate diet and NEVER fed kibble and had grain free high quality canned on,y (natures variety instinct). The last few years of his life he ate nothing but Rad Cat raw.

Jump to now, my husband and I adopted an adorable 5 month old lab/hound puppy (33 lbs) from the local rescue shelter. After having Sam for 13 years and having the wet food is the best to avoid long term health issues mantra in my head for so long, I need some advice on how to feed this puppy. Is kibble just as bad for dogs as it is for cats health wise? I'm reading conflicting opinions. Should I be considering feeding her a canned only diet or is that not as important for dogs? I'm not interested in raw right now but probably will consider it as she gets into adulthood. Bear with me, I know this is a kitty forum, but I know you guys love all animals and also have dogs- any advice would be great, thank you.
Click to expand...
Dogs aren't  true carnivores like cats are so as mentioned above, their dietary needs are different than cats. I have a dog and she eats both dry and wet food. She's 13 years old and very healthy aside from a touch of arthritis which is normal at her age. Whole Earth Farms has a very good and reasonably priced line of both dry and canned foods that I recommend highly. They are available at Petco in the US. It's made by Merrick and good quality. I wasn't as impressed with their canned cat foods. OK in reality, my 3 picky eaters wouldn't touch it so THEY weren't impressed with it.


http://www.petco.com/N_4294934975/Whole-Earth-Farms.aspx?CoreCat=DogFFB_WholeEarthFarms
 
sparkymema

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I used to work as a hunting dog trainer, every dog we trained had either owners food which was always dry or our food which was also dry. The only advantage to dry over wet is convince and how long it can sit in a bowl before going bad. You can apply a lot of the same advantages of wet food vs dry that you have read about cats. For a young puppy like yours I would recommend something like earthborn dry, or pro plan all life stages chicken and rice is also nice and if you can afford it Orijen is also very good dry food for labs. We sometimes had over 60 labs at a time there since they are super common hunting dogs.
 
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