Introducing Mixed Feeding Into Your Pet’s Diet

It’s hard to believe that this summer our Cali Doodles will be 3 years old! In the same breath, it feels like a lifetime ago that we brought home our 8 week old Multigen Australian Labradoodle and became a family of 6 in 2013! Back then, I knew having a puppy was like having a brand new baby (Oh the sleepless nights! Oh the potty training!) but I didn’t fully understand how much our dog would really become  part of our family until much later.

Birthday parties involve Cali, holidays definitely involve our Cali, and vacation and travel involve our Cali as well (approximately 30% of Canadians bring their pets on vacation, with 43% of dog owners always taking their dog along). Sometimes she travels with us when we visit family (sometimes as far as 8 hours away), she’s even had a flight this past winter, and sometimes she visits her favorite kennel here in Regina and plays with her friends. We like to travel with her when we can, as it saves us money of course, but she also enriches the experiences when the whole family is together (I truly feel it helps keep the kids grounded having Cali with us).

Keeping Cali hydrated when we travel is important – she gets nervous in the car, and pants like crazy. Just like the kids need stops for potty and a snack, so do pets. When we stop, we ensure Cali gets a drink after all that panting. When we get to our hotel or family’s house, we feed her and give her a big bowl of water as well. It’s a good idea not to feed your pet too much before travel, to avoid stomach upset, so if you can ensure they’re hydrated for travel that helps a ton.

I recently learned about mixed feeding, and it’s benefits not only to help dogs stay healthy and maintain a healthy body weight, but also how it can help with hydration. With summer travel, and hot weather, ahead, I thought this was worth looking into.

Around 44% of pet owners feed their pet wet food on a regular basis, and one quarter (25%) said they never serve their pet wet food. Until recently I was among that 25%. We had some assumptions about feeding, like thinking that dry food was ‘enough’ for our dog’s diet, and also I really thought Cali would gobble up wet food and over-indulge and gain a ton of doggie-weight. I also had no clue that wet food could help avoid dehydration (duh!).

While dry food is a concentrated energy source and its crunchy texture helps maintain your pet’s oral health, wet food contains fewer calories than dry food and helps your pet maintain a healthy body weight. Serving your pet wet food will not cause them to gain weight if it’s properly integrated into their diet. If slowly introduced, it will actually cause your pet to ingest fewer calories while also providing them with extra health benefits. It also has numerous health benefits, including reducing urinary tract infections.

Introducing your pet to a mixed feeding diet is easy – start off with a ratio of about 25% new food to 75% old food, and work your way up from there over about a week (you should do this anytime you’re introducing new food into your dog’s diet). Later, you can decide what works best for your mixed feeding regimen – either wet for breakfast and dry for dinner or a combination of both at every meal.

In our case, a combination of both works best. We actually have a odd doggie – often times we can give her her breakfast and find it still waiting there later that afternoon (which is apparently crazy-weird for a lab breed). With our IAMS mixed feeding diet, she loves her food and eats both the wet and dry (much like me when I get started on steak frites, it ain’t over until the plate is empty!) We have just started with the ratio mixture, working up to her new IAMS food 100%, so I’ll post again in a few weeks to update how it’s going!

You can learn more about mixed feeding at www.petmixedfeeding.ca.

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