The absolute best dog foods for your dog or puppy is either a WELL-BALANCED raw or homed cooked diet. This page will give information on how to feed these highly nutritious foods.
However, we realize that home cooking is time consuming. Also, even store bought raw food can be somewhat intimidating to some. Others are afraid of not getting a home made diet “right”. Therefore, we have researched dry dog foods extensively in order to make recommendations for those that especially want to feed a dry food.
We Use Dry Dog Food Until Puppies are Four Months
We prefer to feed a balanced raw or home cooked food to dogs and puppies over 4 months. However, we have found a need to start our very young puppies out on dry food rather than raw or home cooked food. Raw or home cooked will not work because of the training we do with our puppies.
About 75% of our puppies’ food comes in the form of treats for training. Because we train so much, we must take the “treats” into account or we would be grossly overfeeding. A balanced or home cooked diet is virtually impossible to feed during training sessions with puppies. Home cooked food tastes better than dry food. If we fed our puppies home cooked or raw food at meal times, they would not be inclined to work for the dry kibble we offer during training sessions. Dry food, for us as trainers, is a necessity. Therefore, we’ve researched dry foods extensively.
Our First Choice is Raw or Home Cooked Food
Still, our first choice, is raw or home cooked. When we keep a puppy past about 4 months, we transition to raw or home cooked when we are able to train with “Jack Pot” rewards instead of using a treat bag full of kibble.
If you are unable to feed a full diet of real food, consider feeding at least a portion of your dog’s food in the form of real food!
Either way, read on. We’ll discuss both how to feed raw or home cooked as well as our favorite dry food.
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