Kibble, kibble, kibble

For the past few nights my dreams have had a recurring theme – dog food. Yes, that is right people, I have actually been dreaming about kibble. I’d much rather dream about Johnny Depp, but I’ve spent hours and hours searching info about suitable puppy foods so no wonder I’m dreaming about kibble.

I live in fear, that if I feed him wrong, my puppy will get allergies; have ear and eye problems, itchy skin, lifeless hair and upset stomach.

It was so easy with our old husky. We didn’t know much about doggy nutrition. We just fed him some cheap supermarket brands and whatever we ate ourselves. He never had any health issues and he looked gorgeous. Only time he ever had stomach upsets was the time he managed to steal and eat one XXXL size roulade cake.

So what should the puppy food be like? These are some recommendations that I have seen in many dog info sites and discussion forums:

- High in protein (around 30%)
- Reasonable high in fat (around 20%)
- The smaller the breed the higher the metabolic energy should be
- Meat source should be the first item in the ingredients list
- No wheat and possibly no grain at all to prevent allergies

Some sources also say no corn so I was quite surprised to notice that some dog foods don’t actually contain ANY meet and all the protein comes from corn. That doesn’t sound like natural food for a dog.

And this is where we come to that metabolic energy. I have compared many brands and noticed that even though two brands have the same protein and fat content, they may have very different metabolic energy. Cause for this is, that one brand is using more ingredients that the dog can’t actually use for energy. If the food has low metabolic energy, puppy needs to eat bigger bowls of it – resulting to bigger piles of poo. If the food has high metabolic energy, smaller amount will be enough, meaning that a pricier quality dog food may not be that pricey after all when one bag last a longer time.

After all that comparison, I have narrowed my list to two brands – Acana small breed puppy and Brit Petit. In addition to the above listed things, I also had to take into consideration that a Yorkie puppy has a very small mouth so kibble size should also be small. Naturally I will first start feeding my little puppy with the same food his breeder has given him and then gradually introduce him to new food.

Let’s hope that now that my decision has been made, I can start dreaming about juicier subjects than dog kibble.