Feeding Dog

Most people get their first dog as a puppy. It should be properly weaned by the time you take it home, and the simplest way of feeding a new puppy is to give it four feeds a day, the first and the last consisting of baby cereal mashed up in warm milk. The other two feeds, at lunchtime and teatime, ought to be a mixture of canned puppy food mixed with rusk. If for some reason you cannot get canned puppy food, you can use canned dog food provided you sprinkle bone meal onto it. Do not, feed the little dogs on meat alone as it is low in calcium.At about twelve weeks you should find that the puppy no longer requires four meals and at this time one of the cereal and milk meals can be dropped. At six months you can omit the other, and three months after that you must decide whether you would prefer your dog to have one meal a day, or two.



Do not get into the habit of letting the dog eat between official mealtimes or of feeding it tidbits, such as sweets or biscuits. Nor should you feed scraps of food from the table when you are eating and never, ever let it lick up leftovers from the plates. There is nothing wrong with feeding any lean bits of left-over meat to the dog in his dish at his next meal. If the puppy has left his meal,remove it after half an hour. Keep to a regular feeding routine and always leave the food dish in the same place. It does not matter what sort of dish you use except that if your dog has long, dangly ears the dish should be a narrow one so that his face can fit into it while his ears hang outside, because if he gets food all over them dermatitis can result. You have several choices when you come to feeding an adult dog but simply feeding it on meat is just not an adequate diet.