Does My Puppy Need a Special Type of Food?

We all know that companies are fighting for you to buy their products. And not just once, most want customers that are loyal and re-purchase their products again and again. In the case of pet food, they want to stay with their brand for the life of your pet. And you have a lot of choices, which means marketers have to get creative when it comes to setting their product apart and getting you to be a customer for life.

One of the ways they do this with dog foods, is through “specialty” formulas. Things like foods for certain breeds or even life stages. But in almost all cases, these foods are just wasting your money.

Worse, they could actually be DAMAGING your puppy

“Puppy food” has been around since 1908, when the F.H. Benner Biscuit Company started making biscuit shaped dog bones and life-stage formulas. The company also was the first to make different-sized kibbles for different breeds. (Benner Biscuit was bought by Nabisco and those bones became “Milk Bones.”)

So puppy food has been around for over a century, but that doesn’t mean it must be good! In fact, like many things that are outdated, having two different life stages has actually made food WORSE.

Since companies started making two different dog foods, it was decided that adult dogs did not need as much nutrition as growing puppies, so the “adult” formulas could be made more cheaply, with fewer ingredients and overall lower quality. (This is why you end up feeding your adult dog so much food!!)

Unfortunately, this was backed by the AAFCO, whose requirements solidify this odd notion that for some reason your adult dog doesn’t need high-quality nutrition or more of certain ingredients, such as protein. This should be sending up a red flag….

But Wait, There’s More!

The other problem with the “puppy food” label is that un-knowing consumers see it and believe it’s right for their dog without reading the ingredients or understanding what their puppy really does need to develop normally.

DHA is critical for eye and brain development, yet AAFCO does not require it in puppy food. And many cheaper brands do not add it to their food. So even though research has PROVEN how important DHA is to your dog’s health, many brands of puppy food do NOT contain it!!!

The AFFCO requirements are that puppies get more protein, fat, calcium and a few other minerals than adult dogs. But why? As humans, do we need less protein as adults than as babies? Most likely not. And athletes, weight lifters, etc., are probably consuming much more protein as an adult than they ever did as a child. And we all know that calcium is important throughout the life of any animal for bone health.

So We Created One AMAZING Food to Feed ALL Dogs

The above reasons are why Stay Loyal is an “all life stages” diet that is high in protein, low in carbs and has the right amount of calcium and fat to keep your dog healthy and trim.

Stay Loyal dog food contains DHA (naturally occurring in fish oil) to make sure your puppies eyes and brain develop correctly.

Because Stay Loyal is higher in quality, you can feed less of it, which saves you money, while still giving your dog proper nutrition.

The Large Breed Puppy Exception

There is one exception to this and that is large breed puppies. Large Breed puppies grow so fast they actually need less fat, calcium and phosphorous.

Not only do they need less they need special ratios of those nutrients, because they need to grow slowly. In addition, it’s best if they stay very lean to keep weight off those soft, fast growing, developing bones and joints.

Too much calcium has been shown in studies to INCREASE the chance of osteoarthritis in large breed dogs as adults.

I have been a breeder of South African Boerboels for over two decades – I KNOW large breeds. This extensive knowledge helped Stay Loyal develop a special Large Breed Puppy formula that has the amount and ratio of these key ingredients to make sure large breed pups grow correctly.

The bottom line is that your puppy’s food affects not only short-term health, but long-term health as well. In order to have a healthy puppy that grows into a healthy adult, you need to feed quality food and not purchase food simply based on the front package labels. To learn more about our complete line of dog food, visit our websiteà https://stayloyal.com.au/