Ideal Diet For Senior Dogs & Cats

As with most things in life, the key to making something truly useful is for it to become a part of your daily routine.

Let’s assume you have a pet that is older than 6 months. You may already know that this old lady loves to doze off in the sun, but you’ve never tried to get her out of the car and take her for a walk without care.

With this in mind, you are going to give her an ideal diet and observe how she does.

You will be seeking out all the different aspects of food that make sense for seniors (and what doesn’t). You will want to find out:

What kind of food is best? How much should I feed it? What should I do if I don’t like it? How much exercise should I give? Does it need more or less? Is it worth the effort? Is there anything else I can give her?

You can use a bunch of leading tools like Holistic Pet Care (http://holisticpetcare.com/), Pet Food Advisor (http://www.petfoodadvisor.com/), VetStreet (http://www.vetstreet.com/), and Chowhound Health Disciplines (http://www.chowhound.com/) as well as look at other sites on our website such as http://petcarebuzzfeeds.com/, http://dogfoodadvice.com/, and http://catadvicebloggersclub.wordpress.com/. We also have an excellent resource called The Dog Food Advisor (http://www.)dogfoodadvisorbloggerclub(dot)wordpress(dot)com/).

As you may know, I am a very big fan of food for aging pets. I have written about this extensively in the past and it’s something I’ve always been interested in.

I thought it might be interesting to write a post on what exactly that means, so that you can address questions like:

• What is the ideal diet for your pet?

• What foods do you think should be avoided?

• How can you best provide them with nutrition?

• What are some healthy alternatives to more traditional diets?

The answers to these questions depend on your pet, your lifestyle and the environment in which they live. For example, some older dogs and cats need extremely low levels of protein — especially if they are also overweight. Others need lots of vitamin C as they are more prone to bone problems. Some need high-calcium diets (as their joints don’t age well without it). And while people often think that they are providing optimal nutrition for aging pets, that isn’t really the case (unless you have a particularly high-quality breed or breed mix) — the reality is much more nuanced. So here’s what we think about what is “optimal” for pets:  what we think should be avoided:  what we think should be encouraged:  what advantages/disadvantages we see from each choice:   Nutritionists will likely disagree with us on every point, however there are several things that I will try to articulate and hopefully help readers make better choices in their own situations. Of course, any discussion of pet nutrition is only going to have limited value unless you yourself have experience feeding your pet or know someone else who does (and feed them well!). This topic was first written about by Susan Estrich (who has a great blog post here on how she feeds her dog) and then expanded upon by two other experts on this topic (who both happen to be shuttling clients over from one industry to another). We included their input because it seems relevant to our audience as well as because we wanted to cover this subject explicitly and not just throw it at users like “dog food” or “cat food”. The following points provide some of the most salient information about choosing an ideal diet for senior pets or pets who are not eating regularly enough due to age restrictions or medical reasons: • 

What do you feed your pet? Do you know what is ideal for their health and longevity, and how they can reach that level?

As a general rule, we recommend feeding your dog or cat an adult-sized mix of grains, vegetables, fruits and meat. That is correct feeding for the average dog or cat (depending on breed). If you have a smaller breed, aim for a ratio of grains to veggies/fruits to meat of 2:1 to 1:1. The reason is that small breeds are prone to dental disease. They also have an increased tendency towards parasites – which can be a problem if they are not getting adequate nutrition.

Highly digestible veggies like asparagus, broccoli etc should be fed any time you see them growing in the garden or from the local farmer’s market. This includes eggplant and zucchini (as well as spaghetti squash). You can also feed raw broccoli with water mixed with lime juice twice per week for optimal digestion. However, if your animal has gastrointestinal issues (such as diarrhea), try incorporating two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar per day into their diet along with the veggies.

A high quality dry food such as Purina Pro Plan or Udi’s works great for small dogs and cats with allergies; but do not replace the above recommendations. For large dogs and cats that are prone to digestive diseases like diarrhea and pancreatitis (cats), we recommend keeping their diet simple – this way they don’t get overwhelmed by too many nutrients at once but at the same time they don’t get sick from too little nutrition either.

You know the old adage about not judging a book by its cover? The same can be said for food. You should never judge a food by its packaging or the fact that it has been produced by someone who has gone through a certain process. Before you can make any claims about whether an ingredient is good or bad, you need to run some tests on it.

You need to start with feeding trial diets to dogs and cats to determine if they would do well on them (and vice versa). If you want to keep your dog or cat healthy, you need to feed your pet what’s going to help it do well.

Thanks to the success of pet food brands like Wellness and Blue Buffalo, we have an abundance of information available on the health benefits of premium quality pet food. Unfortunately, this information is often conflicting. For example, Blue Buffalo has a website which indicates that gluten-free diets are beneficial for senior cats and dogs. However, this website also contains links to a number of other websites which state otherwise – including one by Blue Buffalo itself, which also mentions that gluten-free diets were not recommended for cats or dogs. The decision here is simple: do you trust the information on their site, or do you trust the websites that disagree with it?

If you’re a consumer who’s trying to avoid gluten (which is often present in many pet foods), and want to be sure your dog or cat is eating the best diet possible, then it may be worth your while to read through both sites:

https://pets.webmd.com/dogs/guide/senior-dog-food/   

 

As a dog and cat owner, I’m often asked about the ideal diet for my pets. When I’m asked this, I always give the same answer: “The diet is what you feed your pet.”

I know from experience that people think of diets as ingredients in a finished product, like ingredients in a salad dressing. A salad is not an end product; it’s just a tool for getting the flavor of the salad. The same goes for diets: they are tools for getting more food into a pet’s mouth every day without interfering with his or her natural digestive system.

A dog or cat needs to eat to survive and thrive, but he or she also needs to have sufficient calories (energy) to do so. You can feed a small amount of food that is designed to be palatable, but if it doesn’t provide enough calories your pet will starve. When you look at pet food advertisements, you see pictures of dogs and cats eating packages of chicken nuggets and hamburgers; if you see such ads on TV, they are almost always accompanied by endorsements from veterinarians who say that their clients have lost weight thanks to their pet food choices. That kind of advertisement is deceptive because it implies that there is something special about these foods which makes them better than all other foods available on the market — when in fact there isn’t anything unique about them at all.

The same thing happens when people try to make healthy food choices for themselves — we think we need more vegetables in our diet because we don’t get enough vegetables in our diet now. But vegetables don’t grow in supermarkets all year round; they come from farms which require large inputs into their production process — chemicals like pesticides and fertilizers are used during the growing process or after harvest; that kind of vegetable production requires large amounts of energy (in terms of either fuel or land) which requires even more energy than growing vegetables would do naturally (because it causes pollution too). So unless you live far away from farmers who grow produce organically and cultivate their own land using no chemicals at all — then you don’t need any particular diet for your pets. Learn more on https://pediapets.com