There’s a lot of money spent formulating pet food for dogs and cats and foods for other species as well. It’s really important that dogs and cats get everything they need from their diets, and most of those diets are going to be complete diets. Cats and dogs have different requirements for nutrients in their pet food, so you should never then just mix and give you your cat your dog food and the dog the cat food. You should also have a chat with your vet about that what may be best for your dog in its different life stage, similar to a cat. So there is specific kitten food, there’s specific puppy food, a specific puppy large breed food, small breed. And it’s really important for the puppies, in particular, we’re looking at the calcium and phosphorus content of the diet because they have a lot of growing to do, their bones need to fully grow, that can take up to 18 months in most breeds. So that calcium and phosphorus are really important.
When you get on to other life stage diets, there are other things that may come into play with choosing the correct pet food. So the main things you’re looking at is that it has all the carbohydrate, protein, and fat contents that you require. If you start adding in extra foods that your home cooked, home-cooked diets, then you just need to be aware that you then need to change what you’re giving you a dog from the commercial diet that you’re buying them. There is no need to give them any home-cooked food, but it would be wrong to say don’t do it because I think we all do. But it is worth just checking out with your vet or a nutritionist because there are lots of veterinary nutritionists around as well and just formulating the right intake for your dog or cat. If you don’t, then there are numerous health conditions that can crop up mainly as they get older and most of them will be related to obesity problems, and we do see a lot of obesity in cats, not so much, but dogs, a lot of obese dogs around.
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