The Right Food for Your Puppy

Congratulations on being a puppy owner! This is a special time for both of you, filled with opportunities to get your puppy off to a great start in life.

Just like a baby has different needs than an adult, puppies have different need,s than the dogs they'll grow into. Giving your puppy a good start in life is the best thing you can do to ensure she'll be happy and healthy for years to come.

All puppies need the basics - precise nutrition, time to play and lots of love - but puppies have individual needs, as well. We tend to think of the early years as the "healthy years" and therefore may not give enough consideration to feeding practices. But because of factors like size, breed, age, environment, exercise, heredity and many others, a "one size fits all" approach to nutrition just won't work. Improper feeding can increase your puppy's risk of obesity, excessively fast growth, growth-related skeletal problems, poor muscle and bone development and poor immune response.

A growing puppy needs precise levels of essential nutrients to stay her healthiest. To meet the growth and development requirements of puppies, their bodies require a puppy food with increased amounts of energy, protein and calcium compared to adult dogs' needs.