Although humans might feel that a dog’s diet is boring and lacking in variety, it’s actually beneficial for a dog’s digestive system to feed him the same brand of food consistently. However, if you find yourself in a situation that necessitates a brand switch, use the following steps as a guideline.
Step 1: First of all, determine if the reason you’re switching your dog’s food is a good one. Are you motivated by his health, allergies, vet recommendation or cost? Make sure you are switching food for the right reasons and that the “problem” with the old food will be “solved” with the switch.
Step 2: Introduce the new food into your dog’s diet by creating a mixture with ¼ of the new food with 3/4 of the current food. Do not feed him the new food in addition to his current food; be sure to make the necessary reduction in serving size to his current food. Do this for 2 days.
Step 3: For the next two days, create a 50/50 mixture with his current food and new food. The following two days the ratio of new food to current food should tip the scale in favor of the new food, ¾ new food to ¼ current food. This gradual process should ease the transition and hopefully avoid any digestion issues.
Step 4: If you are switching food from dry food to wet or vice versa, the same rules can apply. Just take more precaution to ensure that the food is mixed very well.
Step 5: Resist the urge to supplement your dog’s diet with extra treats out of misguided guilt! If you do this, your dog might not work up an appetite and this will not help you in your efforts to find out if the switch was a good one.
Step 5: At this point you’ve devoted about a week’s time to making the gradual switch. If your dog is responding well, eliminate the old food entirely.
Step 6: Continue with the new dog food unless there is health or allergy concern. It is not beneficial to switch dog foods based on sales at the market as frequent diet changes may land you at the vet’s office to treat digestive concerns.
By taking the time to switch your dog’s food with these cautions in mind, it should be a painless transition.
This article was written by authors for pet-super-store.com which is an online pet store carrying dog training collars, gps dog tracking and electric dog fences.