Nutrition Focus – Ca:P and Protein

Video Transcript:
Nutrition. Yay. So every dog needs to eat. It is best for them to have a balanced diet. Yes, you can get that with raw. It is just more work for you. If you are interested in feeding raw, I’m not going to go into that much in this video, but if as long as you are working with a veterinary nutritionist who knows what they’re doing and is experienced and good at their job I’m okay with it.

If you are going off the internet, or if you are just making rice and chicken, or beef liver, or whatever please don’t. Please feed your dog a balanced diet, and just Please don’t wing it for your dog. At least for the first two years. So this breed is slow growing. They really aren’t done until about three.

Now their skeleton is pretty done around two and then they’re filling out they’re putting on their muscle mass. They’re pinching out their ribs. They’re doing the final touches in that third year or second year into the third year. So basically what I think we should go over is What the requirements are and what to watch for in your food.

And then I’ll touch on a little bit of what we feed. And it is perfectly acceptable for you to feed the same thing that I feed. It is also perfectly acceptable for you to transition to something you can actually get locally. Let’s go over real quick the calcium-phosphorus link. and what it means. So when we have calcium and phosphorus, they are required together to essentially grow bones and muscles and make your body function. There’s a calcium-phosphorus loop in each and every cell. And when we have dogs who we are overdoing one or the other, It can throw off their balance, it can throw off their growth rates, it can make them grow their skeleton at a higher rate or a lower rate.

And it can just affect how they grow and how they can move in this body that has been directly affected by our poor choices. On dog food, typically what you’ll see is you’ll see a percentage or you’ll see a gram. And it’s going to be a minimum guaranteed, not a maximum guaranteed, which means it could be more, but this is the minimum that you will have in your dog’s food.

You want the calcium and phosphorus to be as close to a 1 to 1 ratio as possible. So if your calcium percentage is like 1. 2 percent dry matter, you’d want your phosphorus to be like 1. 1 or 1. 2, a 1. 2 to 1 can get a little iffy and you’ll see it in some different diets. So and let’s just talk about some different options of diets.

Anything that is like AFCO approved, which is just who tells people how to do their jobs. With balancing pet diets in the U. S. Canada tends to follow AFCO as well. Because they are in America after all. Oh, we just forget that sometimes. So basically, if you have it labeled as an all life stages dog food, it has to meet or exceed the requirements and the strictness for the most particular life stage which is a large breed puppy. So anything that out there that is labeled all life stages should be safe for your Anatolian puppy where we get into the weeds a little bit is when you have an all life stages that is a grain free. Gluten free. Any sort of marketing tactic to make you feel like the food is more human grade or better quality because of words that they slapped on the bag and not because the label on the back of the bag is a red flag.

So I don’t want to, I don’t want you to feel bad if you are currently feeding like wellness or blue Buffalo or These fancy pants, boutique y brands that advertise to humans rather than formulating to dogs. But let’s just focus on the back panel. Okay here we feed the Allsages maintenance food, which is 26 percent protein, 16 percent fat, and the rest is carbs.

That is what our puppies get. Thank you. There is two primary reasons for this. One, it is balanced and it is safe for large breed puppies. Great. The second reason is that they need those carbs for their energy. The carbs are what keeps them going and keeps them, happy. Just like us. They are able to directly convert fat to energy.

From their diet unlike us. We also need carbs for our brain to function, which I prefer it when my brain is functional so that’s nice, but the 26 percent protein is low enough that it is not encouraging them to grow at a faster rate than they need to. So by, by using a maintenance diet that is good for all stages, we are not encouraging overgrowth.

We’re not encouraging the puppy to grow faster. You will see some people with Anatolians who are like, Oh my, my six month old puppy is 85 pounds. He’s so massive. People who measure their personal value and success based on the largeness and substantiality of a puppy. That should be going through slow, sustained growth, ideally who are overfeeding and doing on purpose to just make them monstrous have other issues that I am not qualified to address.

Like they should probably seek help. So please don’t feed your puppy to the point where you’re like, oh, yeah, he’s beating everyone else he’s the top of the litter for weight Because what I can tell you is that the biggest puppy in the litter today Will not be the biggest adult puppy in the litter it has never failed me that the biggest the most big puppy at eight weeks old is never the largest because they do not live in a litter.

their whole lives. They go home with you. They might live with one or two other dogs, but they’re not competing with eight other puppies for food and attention and everything else. And there’s no scarcity. There’s no scarcity here, but typically in litters, like there is one who eats more than everyone else and that’s why they’re bigger.

But when everyone else gets their own food bowl at home, they can surpass that eater faster. And people are always confused by this, but the weight amount in a litter does not hold up over time. So never consider that for selection, please. Half the time, the smallest puppy, who’s just not very like dominant and not very aggressive when it comes to feeding time and just hangs back and waits for everybody else to be done and just picks up whatever’s left.

Like that’s my job to address. It’s not the puppy’s problem, but if that puppy is allowed to just take what he gets and don’t throw a fit and he’s just very easygoing and nice, the minute they get home, they start growing a lot because they’re catching up and they do surpass the biggest bully puppy of the litter usually, which is just funny.

So don’t select a puppy for being compact either cause it’s probably not going to see that way. So basically. Same. We want slow sustained growth. If you have a brand of food that you like, I send you home with some of the 2616 that they’ve been on. And I would just ask that you slowly transition them to your new food and not just, take them 100 percent one day to the next.

Usually you start like 25 percent to 30 percent your new food mixed with their current diet. And then maybe do that for two or three meals and then add a little bit more, go up to like half and half for a few meals and then 60, 40, 70, 30 type thing for a few meals. And then you’re probably gonna be out of the food that I sent you.

And then you can just feed them what you wanted to feed them, but just make sure that label holds up. And it is not super high protein not super high fat. And the biggest reason is that the K cals in the amount of food that you’re feeding your puppy does not need to be huge, but you do want them to get the sense of satiation.

So you want them to feel full at least twice a day. And we’re just training the dog how to eat and they’re eating more quantity with less calories. with a 26 16 diet than they would be with a 30 25 or the 30 32 which is an Intense diet for like sled dogs running the Iditarod. It is not for the puppy sleeping on the couch Okay, that is how we get overweight dogs, and it is never kind to feed a dog to be overweight we need to find better ways to express our love for our dogs than by overfeeding them and if you need ideas on how to Tell your dog that you love it other than giving it treats all the time.

Let me know. If you are a treat person, use their kibble as treats. Do not buy jerky treats or liver treats or anything else because any treat that you are feeding in large quantity relative to their meals is gonna throw off that balanced diet. So just use the balanced diet as the treats. If you are a treat a holic and you love treats, Use their food.

They don’t need to eat out of a bowl. Bulls are actually not required, and many trainers say that the bulls are the devil. if you have time and you have the energy feed your dog their meals by hand as treats, as reinforcement as I love you. Thank you. That, that is perfectly acceptable.

What is not acceptable is just loading them with calories because you love them. So let’s not do that. Okay. I hope this helps. If you need more information or more details because you’re science y, just let me know. All right. Bye.