Healthy Paws Blog: Bringing your new puppy home

The breeder will usually give you enough food for a couple of meals. If you’re going to change from something else to Healthy Paws, we recommend that you do an immediate swap after those first couple of meals. If your puppy experiences a runny tummy when it first gets to you, that’s usually due to the stress of moving home. Follow the feeding guide on the back of the pack and however distasteful it may sound, keep an eye on its stools. If the first couple of stools are hard, then there’s a soft runny one at the end, it denotes that you’re feeding too much food, so reduce the amount you’re feeding slightly.

Puppy food recipes are developed based on bone growth. The important thing about puppy food is the phosphorus/calcium ratio. Phosphorus absorbs calcium and this mix is used for brain growth and eye function, what’s left is then used for bone growth. For a balanced puppy diet there should be one part phosphorus to 1.2 parts calcium.

The ingredients in Healthy Paws puppy food are designed to support and maintain healthy hips and joints for growing puppies. The use of British turkey meat and the mix of oils and minerals in this food is rich in DHA supporting brain and eye function too. Our hypoallergenic recipes are ideal for your puppy’s sensitive tummy. Naturally high in vitamin C and anti oxidants, its vegetables, herbs and fruits support the immune system and the single source of protein makes it highly digestible and extremely tasty. Normally you should feed your puppy four times a day up to 12 weeks and then cut it to three times a day, by 16 weeks it should be twice a day. A dog should need about two poos a day, the rule is that the smaller the poo, the better it is because the goodness of the food has been absorbed into the body.

Puppies move onto adult food at different rates depending on the breed, but as a guide a Jack Russell would be ready to move onto adult food at 8 months, a Great Dane at 14 months. Giant breeds don’t really have a ‘junior’ period, two years down the line they’re ready for senior food. Essentially, you stop feeding puppy food when the dog’s height has been achieved and it starts to put on weight.

It’s important to remember that puppies are supposed to go through a ‘gangly’ period, so don’t think that you need to feed them more food, it’s part of the natural process, think about human teenagers, they go through the same stage! Sometimes owners feel embarrassed that their puppy looks gangly, especially Labradors – it’s just that their bones have to develop before they can take their final body weight.

Whatever you do, don’t think you should add some chicken breast or steak to their meals; meat is full of phosphorus which absorbs the calcium, too much of it robs the goodness that should be going to their bones and you will be storing up problems with metabolic bone disease later in life. If you do feed extra meat, then you need to add extra calcium too, for example some of the Healthy Paws wet food. If a puppy needs to put weight on, then little and often is the rule than more at one sitting.

Helpful hints if you’re about to get a new puppy

Most puppies start to leave the bitch from 8 weeks old for their new home and for a successful transition, we recommend that you drop off a scarf, or a pillow or something similar with the bitch for a few days beforehand so that the puppy has something to take with it to its new home that still smells of its Mum.

Puppies always cry on their first night in a new home, as long as you’re giving them a good diet so they don’t have tummy cramps, they will soon settle down and start to feel safe and sound.

A puppy crate can be a good thing if used correctly – the crate should be seen as a reward and a calm place, but remember that it’s the dog’s den, not your children’s! Keep the children out of it so that the dog always feels secure in it, feed and keep toys in the crate and put a blanket over it to make it more like a den; it’s a special space for your puppy.

If your bitch is having her first litter, it’s as much a learning curve for you as it is for her. We’re often asked questions about how best to feed puppies, when they should be weaned, when they progress to adult food and so on, so here are the answers to some frequently asked questions.

Approximately 2 weeks before giving birth the Dam will need to increase her calorie intake by about 20%, the easiest way to do this is to feed a quality puppy food as it has a greater protein and fat content. Rather than feed the Dam a set quantity, it is best to let her have free access to food, she knows what her body needs. It is important that puppy food is fed while she is lactating as well.

Every dog breed is different, so a Chihuahua becomes mature before a Labrador for example, but normally at around 5 weeks it’s the time to start to introduce your puppy to a complete dry food. The Healthy Paws British turkey and brown rice puppy food recipe has a smaller crunchy kibble, ideal for starting your puppy off and helping its teeth and gums to stay healthy. Take the hint from the mother, if a bitch has a large litter, the likelihood is that she will start to kick the pups away earlier, if her litter is just four pups then she will be happier to keep feeding them for longer. We recommend soaking our puppy food to create a porridge initially using warm water to soften the kibble and feed that for the first three days, gradually introducing more and more uncrushed dry kibble to get them used to the crunch over the next few days. By 8-10 weeks old they should be eating fully dry food.

Give the puppies' new owners a few days worth of the food that they have been on, so this is not another shock to them when they get to their new homes. If they're going to change from something else to Healthy Paws, we recommend that they do an immediate swap after those first couple of meals. If their puppy experiences a runny tummy when it first gets to them, that’s usually due to the stress of moving home. Follow the feeding guide on the back of the pack and however distasteful it may sound, keep an eye on its stools. If the first couple of stools are hard, then there’s a soft runny one at the end, it denotes that you’re feeding too much food, so reduce the amount you’re feeding slightly.

Dogs aren’t like humans, their stomach is like a concertina - all the food goes through the colon in a soft, sloppy state, containing lots of moisture and the nutrients the dog needs are absorbed into the body. It’s not until what’s left of the food reaches the rectum that the moisture is removed and it passes as solid, small poos. Indeed a wild dog, who is hunting for food might pass very few stools as he is using up all the nutrients in the food he’s catching. As the colon is much bigger than the rectum, if you’re over feeding then you’ll know about it because the first couple of poos excreted will be solid, dry and are true waste as all the nutrients have been absorbed, but then the dog will continue to produce poo where the first part is hard and the end of it is sloppy making it difficult to poop scoop.

Because of the better nutrition contained in Healthy Paws, you only need to feed 50% of the amount of some other premium foods and up to 60% of the amount of a standard supermarket food. This is why Healthy Paws can work out cheaper than most other foods, including supermarket brands. The recommended amount to feed your dog is given on the bag of Healthy Paws food, but for the optimum amount for your own dog, there’s no better way than to study their stools! A medium sized dog fed on Healthy Paws complete adult dog food costs approximately 60p per day to feed.

Some owners report that their dogs have begun to be quite picky about their food. Unfortunately, this is usually a result of something we humans have given them. A dog shouldn’t be picky if he or she’s being fed correctly. If you give a dog wheat, for example in a piece of your toast in the morning, then it will sit in its stomach all day and the dog will not be hungry for its food later. If your dog starts chewing its paws, that’s an easy sign that it’s been eating something containing wheat or wheat gluten which does not agree with its metabolism. Take a look at our YouTube channel for a video containing useful information about dog digestion.

We’re often asked whether dogs go off food – dogs don’t taste like humans, they have 600-1700 taste buds depending on their age, whereas we have 6000-9000. A dog’s sense of smell is just as important as their taste buds so if you think your dog is not showing as much interest in his food as previously one trick is to rub some garlic on the bottom of the bowl before you feed him. The dog will smell something different and interesting and will be encouraged to taste it, but you can still be confident that you’re feeding the right nutrients. If your dog starts to be picky, cut down the amount of food you’re feeding and put it in the oven for a few minutes to get warm – what that does is release an odour from the fat contained within it and be very appealing to your dog.

Because doggy digestion is not the same as human digestion, there are a few important things to watch out for – you might think it’s good to give your dog some chicken breast or steak now and again, but meat is full of phosphorus which absorbs calcium, too much phosphorus and the calcium is robbed from bones and teeth which can create problems with metabolic bone disease, so be very careful. Healthy Paws recipes are nutritionally balanced to give the right phosphorus/calcium ratio. Our recipes also use small quantities garlic and herbs to help deter fleas and worms and natural preservatives like rosemary and vitamin E. The complete dry dog food by Healthy Paws is also produced with a crunchy kibble that’s ideal for healthy teeth.

There’s a choice of four complete dry adult food recipes from Healthy Paws, take a look at the details before selecting the one you feel is best for your dog. Healthy Paws does also provide wet food, but remember that if a dog has 100 grams of dry food, he would need 500 grams of wet food to give the same nutritional benefit because of the moisture content of wet food (generally 80%). Wet food is a good option if a dog is convalescing, but normally a complete dry food is a good, nutritionally balanced choice.

Using treats

The use of treats can be very handy for dog training and rewards but remember that the quality of treats that you feed can impact on their digestion too. Don’t use treats containing wheat when you’ve been so careful to avoid it in their food. If your dog needs to lose weight, you need to reduce the amount of food given by the amount of treats given during a day.

Things you wish you’d always known about dog food

When you first have a puppy your main concerns are about making it feel at home, toilet training, teaching it to sit, stay, walk to heel and socialise with people and other dogs, no-one tells you what a minefield buying the right dog food can be, yet what a huge difference it can make to the new member of your family. Take a look at our ‘Bringing Your New Puppy Home’ post if you’d like to know more about feeding puppies in particular – this post is all about the ingredients used in dog food, because we are incredibly proud of the recipes we use for Healthy Paws and we’d like to help you steer clear of unhelpful ingredients.

Healthy Paws dog food uses 100% natural ingredients, it’s hypoallergenic and extremely palatable, which means that dogs love it and they thrive on the nutrition it provides. Here are some facts you may not know about dog food generally and reasons why there are some things you are best to steer clear of.

The one key ingredient that can cause problems for a dog’s digestion is wheat. It can cause them to chew their paws, scratch their skin and generally feel under the weather. It’s wheat gluten that is the issue here and changing the diet to exclude wheat gluten can mean you have a happy, healthy dog within literally a few days. All Healthy Paws dog foods exclude wheat and wheat gluten – it’s a big No No for us.

If a dog food says it contains cereal, that’s what’s known as an ‘open ingredient’, so it can change according to what’s available at the time of manufacture, so it could be barley, wheat, grass, roots and stalks or even soya bean mill waste. Some foods contain what’s called ‘wheat feed’ – that’s actually poultry waste which is also used as a fertiliser on fields – it is palatable for dogs, but it’s not great nutritionally.

Not all gluten is the same. Wheat gluten tends to be the allergen for dogs, but gluten is a cereal protein and maize gluten, or prairie meal as it is sometimes called, is a prebiotic and hypoallergenic, so it can be a useful ingredient.

The most important thing about dog food is the ratio between phosphorus and calcium. This is because phosphorus absorbs calcium and helps the body to replenish cells including bones and teeth. If there’s not enough calcium in the mix, then the teeth and bones will suffer. A balanced diet should see a ratio of 1.2:1 phosphorus to calcium or greater.

Meat derivatives are also an open ingredient, so they can include all sorts of things that we wouldn’t normally regard as meat. Often people would think that meat derivatives are things like offal, hooves and ears. However, that’s not the case – there is more commercial value in selling hooves and pigs ears as treats than in putting them in as a component of the food. Meat derivatives in dog food are more likely to be things like veins and the scum found around the pan after cooking. Strangely enough we don’t like that idea for our dog food, so you won’t find meat derivatives in Healthy Paws food.

Protein in itself does not make a dog hyperactive, fat is their energy source, meat protein is used for a dog’s muscle growth and is stored in different parts of their body, vegetable cereal proteins are mostly stored in fatty tissue. It’s generally artificial preservatives that make the dog hyper even though they are European approved preservatives.

Some proteins are complex such as hair, feathers and hide – these cannot be broken down by dogs and these are listed as crude protein. However, good proteins can also be listed as crude, but you can tell the quality of the protein in the amount of food that is needed to feed your specific dog.

Meat is also an open ingredient – that’s why at Healthy Paws we specify precisely what meat is used in our food. Because it’s an open ingredient, it can include roadkill and diseased animals. Farm animals cannot be fed meat products because of the possible transmission of disease. At Healthy Paws we think if it’s not good enough for farm animals, then it’s not good enough for dogs.

Our recipes include diomethianine amino acid which gives the meat flavour, it also binds ammonia which will help stop lawn burn.

Sometimes we’re asked what calories there are in our food – this is a flawed measurement for dog food – you need to look at the fat and the specific protein content because different sorts of proteins are used in dog food, some of which animals can’t break down. For example, some manufacturers will use feathers and leather as part of their protein content –a shoe might be 50% protein (leather), but that can’t be used as part of a calorie count as it has nothing nutritious in it. In other foods crude protein can mean protein from vegetables.

Raw food is currently very fashionable, but be careful, if a dog has raw food and licks a child, the chance of it passing on bugs like salmonella is very high. A recent report from the United States has been very clear that feeding raw food can have a negative impact both on humans and dogs. We’ve all been taught to be very careful about preparing chicken for example, but we give raw food to our dog and think nothing of it then coming and licking us. Calcium/phosphorus levels are very important, so bone-on meat like chicken wings is better.

Some pet owners prefer wet food – Healthy Paws wet food contains the good nutritious ingredients you find in the complete dry food. However, because wet food is generally made up of 80% water, you have to give some thought as to the actual proportions of protein and look carefully at how the protein content is labelled. For example, a 400 gram tin of wet food with 10% protein would have 40 grams of protein. The same 400 gms, taking 80% of it away for water content would give us 80 grams of dry food, 40 grams of which is protein, so it would actually be 50% protein content. Vets will often recommend a low protein food for kidney problems and people will buy wet food believing it is lower in protein when in fact it is higher.

Ensure that you spend as much time looking at the ingredients of the treats that you feed as the food itself. If a dog has been given human food as a treat, for example sausages, they could well contain wheat and cereal – sausages for example generally contain 50% cereal. Healthy Paws fruit cookies have been developed using apples, pears and bananas, dogs love them and they provide a quick energy boost.

Smell is more important than taste for a dog, so if a dog seems to be bored with its food (usually because it would prefer a treat instead!), the best solution is to put it in the oven for a few minutes to get warm. By releasing the odour from the fat content in the food, you’re suddenly making it much more appealing.

At Healthy Paws we make use of garlic and herbs in our recipes to provide a natural preservative and to help prevent fleas and ticks. We also provide a herbal supplement if your dog has a particular requirement for this – Herbolistics contains a combination of 13 herbs and seeds which compliment your dog’s diet – this can be particularly useful if your dog has been unwell or seems to need a boost. It stimulates the metabolism and its seaweed content helps dental health.

Blog Posts: Puppy

Bringing your new puppy home

Tips for your new litter

Doggy Digestion

Dispel The Myths About Dog Nutrition