Diet

Question
Hi there, I have four dogs ; 6 month old chinese shar pei, 5 month old German shepherd, 6 month old great Dane and a 14 month old great Dane. I have been feeding all of them the same food but I don't feel they should be eating the same diet and also think they would greatly benefit from my making their food. Please help with recipes for each pup and amounts. They all eat twice a day and are eating Diamond naturals large breed puppy food. Thanks

Answer
If there is no other reason for your desire to change their diet other than a feeling, you would be making a mistake to change it up.

Dogs do not like change. Changes in food/diet can cause all sorts of unexpected problems and make cleaning up after they do their business a misery for their owner.

It can trigger efforts to assert dominance as food is a key way of doing that. If the top dog notices other dogs have different food, he will seek to intimidate them into giving it up just to assert his dominance. I see this all the time. Eventually he'll forget about it and the submissive dog can eat.

If everyone has the same food, there is far less motivation to do this. It's the "difference" that triggers a dominant dog's Attn. Without that trigger he is less likely to use food as tool to assert his dominance.

It can cause weeks of diarrhea as each dog's body attempts to adjust his internals to handle the new food with new ingredients.

It can lead to picky, finicky eaters and will if you try to get them to eat by constantly trying something new to find one they really like.

New ingredients a dog didn't have in his previous food can result in all sorts of skin conditions. Soy is known to cause horrible skin problems in dogs sensitive to it and/or serious intestinal upset.

Recently geneticists read the dog's genome, and much to many people's surprise a dog is genetically as the saying goes - a domesticated wolf.

All we've done over the centuries is decide which wolf genes get expressed. We've selected for submissive behavior to humans, and all sorts of sizes and colors. Suppressing them though does NOT get rid of them. Every dog has all the genes to make a wolf.

By that I mean that if dogs any breed, even if all were the same breed, were allowed to mate and produce offspring freely without humans interference, over a period of many generations of breeding even the tiniest, most unwolflike breed (Japanese Chin, Pug, Yorkie Etc.)would get a little more wolf-like every generation until after say a decade of unrestricted breeding the descendent's would return to being wild dogs/wolves similar in looks to a dingo.

NOW WHAT DOES THAT MEAN :) to you and your desire to change their diet?

I have a feeling one reason why you think they should eat different things is because those breeds look very different, so it kind of makes sense that they should have different things to eat, but if that is part of the reason, it's false.

No matter what a dog looks like, they are still the same animal. The changes we have made in their appearance are superficial, and don't alter that a dog is an obligate carnivore that thrives on an all meat/bone/organ diet. That is true for all breeds regardless of how different they are, from the chihuahua to the Mastiff to the Greyhound to the Pug Etc.

NOW INDIVIDUAL dogs may have health conditions that require custom diets, but for a healthy dog the best diet is the one as close to a carnivore diet as you can afford and provide with not too much effort (unless you enjoy preparing their meals).

Dogs are wonderful creatures, pets Etc., I have more than my share, so I know how hard it is to resist seeing each one of them as being as individual as we are, and on some levels they are. On other levels they are not.

When it comes to food/diet dogs don't get any extra thrill about having a different food. That sort of thing is a human joy. It's a sense of "individualism" that dogs would eschew due to their much stronger pack animal instinct.

If I were to guess, I'd say they actually enjoy eating  the same thing, because it reenforces their sense of being part of a team/pack. Wolves in a pack eat the same thing, and do so happily. It makes sense that dogs would react similarly.

As for you, you and your dogs will get more up time together and far less downer time, because keeping it all the same prevents all the fighting/jealousy that different food would likely cause.

Right now I imagine you can feed them at the same time and go do other things while they eat.

If you give them all different things, I can guarantee you, you will not be able to do that. You will have to stand guard until they are all finshed with their meal in order to prevent the conflict different foods for all would likely cause.

Now if you still want to change their diet you can, but you should maintain your current practice of giving them all the same thing.

If you want help coming up with the best diet they can all eat, let me know and I'll be happy to suggest something taking into consideration what works best for you.

Johnny