Four Basic Steps on How to Set an Effective Diet For Your Mixed Breed Dog

By J.J. Yong

Dogs are just like humans - they have specific nutritional requirements too. Their daily food consumption can depend on breed, age, lifestyle and condition. It is indeed difficult to determine a balanced diet for your mixed-breed dog especially when do not a single clue about your dog's breed. There was a case that dog owners fed their dogs with leftovers. These particular dogs were treated like scavengers and this could affect their well-being and health.

Like humans, uncontrollable eating habits can cause obesity. Your dog is considered as obese if he matches few of these criteria below:

• His ribs are not easily felt under a heavy fat covering, or there are fat over lower back and tail base.


• There is fat over lower back and tail base.


• Waist barely visible to absent.


• No abdominal tuck and this may exhibit obvious abdominal distension.

Therefore, here are the ten steps on how to set an effective diet for your mixed-breed dog:

Step 1: Estimate food proportion based on your dog's breed. Larger breeds (a.k.a. big dogs) have the tendency to fasten their food down without chewing properly, and to put on weight - therefore, adding stress to typically more fragile joints and cartilage. You are required to prepare low cholesterol and low sugar diet for these particular breed dogs so that they will not able to gain weight easily. Feeding them with kibble - a coarsely ground meal, able them to chew food much longer and absorb more nutrients effectively. Thus, it also provides high fiber diet for your dog in which soothes the defecation process.

As for smaller breeds, you should construct a balanced diet that contains additional high quality protein, rich in fats and carbohydrates in order to give smaller dogs that extra energy boost. In contrast, smaller kibble sizes to suit smaller mouths, encouraging more chewing and improving digestion process.

Step 2: Protein is the main priority in your dog's diet. You could look for meat meal protein sources are high in the ingredient list as listed on the label as a form of protein such as chicken meal, lamb meal, venison meal. Grains like rolled oats, barley and brown rice are used as cheap filler in order to boost the food's protein percentage.

Step 3: Set a vegetarian diet occasionally. A well-planned vegetarian diet can work for dogs on an occasionally basis, although dogs are carnivores by nature. Dogs need animal protein because these it is categorized as first class proteins. Most veterinarians and holistic practitioners agree that although a dog can survive on a vegetarian diet, they may not thrive on it.

Step 4: Start choosing Premium Brand dog foods. Choose Premium Brand dog foods instead of Economy Brand dog foods. The cheapest ingredients are rarely the healthiest ones. Please read the labels of these dog foods to ensure it has appropriate nutrition values.

Your dog's daily diet needs to be well planned based on its breed. Therefore, it is important to start a dog DNA breed test for your dog with the intention of setting a right diet for your mixed-breed dog. For more information about dog DNA testing as a breed identification tool, visit http://dogdnabasics.com