Feeding a dental diet is one of the easiest ways to prevent periodontal disease and clean your dog's teeth.
Hills T/D is a complete, balanced dry food which helps to clean the dog’s teeth as they chew.
I seem to spend a lot of time talking about pet food. From little furry rodents to giant dog breeds, what to feed and how much of it is a constant topic of discussion. Raw food is all over the place at the moment and the corresponding raw meat-based diets (RMBD) are a newish trend in dog food.
Alot of problems arise when assumptions are made. The more common ones we run across in vet science are those of anthropomorphising (assuming animals are just people in small, hairy suits).
This can lead to people doing things like:
A common question that I get, often after advising a patient to lose weight, is 'How much should I feed?' This is usually followed quickly by the observation that the weather has been a bit wet and they’ve had an operation and their mother isn't well and ....... “I haven't been walking her much”.
A lot of pet health revolves around feeding and this is especially the case for rabbits. While rabbits have a few breed related disorders (dwarfs can have altered head shape resulting in dental issues), infectious diseases (calicivirus and myxomatosis ) and husbandry issues (flystrike and heat stroke for example), alot of the problems we see are directly or indirectly related to the food they eat.
Flying pigs might be something of a concern but despite what Facebook says, I haven't seen any. Grass eating dogs on the other hand, are more common than fake news.
Now some people might think the reason I see a lot of grass eating dogs is that I see a lot of sick dogs - which is true, BUT, I also see a lot of healthy dogs that also eat grass.
said a famous TV science guy and the truth is: we don’t know!
Food is something we think about a lot. TV shows, books and blogs all cover it from every angle and every celebrity has their own version of the optimum diet. So it should be no surprise that there are trends in pet food also...
These days there are multiple pet diets all spruiking their benefits because they are lower, higher, newer, older, rarer or more or less refined. It's hard to get a handle on!
Even when you start to get your head around it, a new diet comes up and it all starts all over again.
Dogs eat a lot of things, which isn’t the same as saying you can feed your dog anything, far from it!
Dogs are living longer and longer lives and this has much to do with the diets we feed them now. Modern foods are well balanced and provide dogs with age appropriate nutrition. Even though there are a number of great foods out there that dogs thrive on, many owners can’t resist giving their pets a few treats off the plate as well.
There has recently been an image of a typed sign doing the rounds which claims that some peanut butters contain xylitol and can be toxic to dogs.
Xylitol is a sugar alcohol which is manufactured and used as an artificial sweetener to replace sugar. It has a lower glycaemic index than sugar and is safe in all species except for dogs.
Yes, Xylitol is toxic to dogs. There are 2 clinical causes of xylitol toxicity in dogs:
