It depends on your cat. Grooming in terms of brushing and making sure that your cat is grooming themselves sufficiently is necessary. I think that's a good habit to get into. It greatly depends on how well your cat grooms themselves. Some cats groom themselves very well and have a nice shiny coat with no matting. It's great when that happens, but sometimes, especially if your cat's got longer hair, they will need some support to ensure that their coat doesn't get matted. So at least getting your cat acclimated to being brushed consistently and making sure that it's a positive experience by incorporating some treats can help maintain a good quality coat.

We could probably talk about this a lot. I'll try to pick some of the highlights, but I think some specific things should be touched on because they're super common. The biggest thing nowadays is the grain-free movement that has gained a ton of traction in the last several years. It's been slowed a little bit with the concerns of heart disease linked to it, but it's still a big thing. It's not that grain-free is necessarily inherently bad, but some of the deficiencies they've identified that could potentially be linked to underlying heart conditions in some dogs are certainly a concern. The idea that grain-free diets are inherently better for pets does not have any sort of research behind it to support it. It's more based on assumptions about how nutrition works. The problem with that is that, apart from there being no research to support it, is that dogs that are on grain-free diets tend to be overweight. This is largely caused by what has to be done when you move to a grain-free diet. For example, one of the big concerns is corn. Many people become very heated when you talk about corn in dog nutrition because they believe that corn is a filler that is harmful to pets and that many companies use it to fill the food without it having any benefit.

Corn is, therefore, one of the grains that get removed. But corn, when processed properly, is very dense in nutrition. Pet companies use it because it provides a lot of nutrients for the pet. When a company removes it in making a grain-free diet, they have to replace it with something else or their food will be nutrient deficient. They'll often replace it with a more starchy carbohydrate like potatoes just to be able to label it as grain-free. As a result of that, it tends to be a more carbohydrate-dense diet, and, generally speaking, dogs tend to be more prone to gaining weight. I see that as one of the problems, along with the concerns about the links to heart disease.

The struggle is that many people are moving their pets to grain-free diets because they have an underlying issue, whether it is skin allergies or GI issues, and they think that the grain-free diet will fix the problem. It doesn't because grain is not a common allergen in dogs most of the time. There isn't good research that proves this is a common allergy, and therefore we should move in another direction. It's giving a lot of pet owners false hope. If I have a pet owner that has their dog on a grain-free diet, and the dog's doing much better than before, I certainly won't argue that, and I've had that happen on a few occasions.

The other concept that I see more of, maybe even more so than the grain-free nowadays, is high protein diets. High-protein diets in dogs are extremely common, and it's become the norm that it is good for the dog. Again, the problem is that the research does not support it. Clinically, I see a lot of problems with dogs that are on high-protein diets, especially older dogs. The older your pet is, the harder it is for them to process that protein. A good, well-balanced diet in an adult dog is a diet that's cognizant of the nutrition that's being provided and created based on the current research that's out there. Proteins usually make up a percentage of low to mid-twenties of daily food intake on a dry matter basis. That should be the percentages if you're looking at dry food. These other diets that I'm talking about, and there are so many of them that it's actually the norm now, contain upwards of 30%, even as high as 40% protein.

The liver has to process that extra protein, and the kidneys have to excrete the breakdown products. We often see dogs with abnormalities in their blood work because they're getting all of this excess protein that they don't need but that their body has to deal with. The older your pet is, the more harmful that can be. So the myth would be that high-protein diets are good for dogs. That is just, unfortunately, not true. It's not based on research, and the older your dog gets, the less protein they need. Good senior diets will typically have even lower protein, closer to 20%. If there are significant kidney problems, dogs with kidney disease need an even lower percentage of potentially down to 15 or 16% protein. I could go on about additional myths, but I think those are the two most impactful ones for where we are with pet nutrition.

It tends to lean in that direction, just like human food does. You can do free feeding in a single-dog household successfully and have a lean dog. Sometimes even a multi-dog household can pull it off, but it's a lot more difficult to manage the more dogs you have. If you think about it, if they're free feeding, you have no idea who's eating what, or how much they're eating throughout the day. So there's no way to control their calories tightly. I am a big proponent of meal feeding, typically twice a day because that's most practical, and it keeps their metabolism going consistently throughout the day. That allows you to control exactly how much each pet is eating. You're using a measuring cup and working with your veterinarian to figure out how much to feed with the goal of feeding for an optimal body condition.

No, not typically. I've never seen that be the case. When dogs are eating grass, sometimes they're just dogs. I have a dog that will occasionally eat grass and never throw up. She's kind of like a horse in that sense. I think eating grass because of a deficiency is an uncommon scenario. From what I see in practice, dogs eat grass because they haven't eaten their dog food that day, making them a little nauseous. So they eat grass, and then they throw up afterward, or they throw up, and then they go eat grass. There's usually a presence of underlying nausea or GI upset that many things can cause. Grass eating is typically related to GI upset rather than inadequate nutrition. Them trying to find nutrition in grass isn't typically the case.

Prescription diets are extremely useful in many different circumstances because prescription diets treat or manage specific conditions. So if you're dog has an underlying joint disease, you can use prescription joint diets to help manage that. Suppose your dog has urinary problems or a history of bladder stones, which are actually fairly common in dogs. In that case, there are prescription urinary diets that will help reduce the risk of recurrence once the underlying issue is addressed.

Those are just two of many examples where prescription nutrition can be very valuable. Because they are prescription diets, they have a particular condition that they're treating. They have to be prescribed by a veterinarian to ensure that it is the appropriate diet for that pet. My personal approach in the way I practice is to rely heavily on therapeutic diets whenever possible because if we can manage or treat disease through nutrition, it's always a good starting point.

No, it's not. The big difference is that wet food has a massive amount of water content. Usually, about 75 to 80% of the food in the can is water, which certainly has its benefits in some circumstances, like if you have a dog that is just not a big drinker and tends to get dehydrated if we aren't careful. Adding some wet food to the diet can be helpful because it adds water content. Also, with certain chronic conditions like kidney disease, having added water content can benefit dogs who can't maintain hydration status because of underlying disease. You can obtain adequate nutrition with dry or canned food or a combination of the two.

That's a good question. This question is becoming more and more popular. The thing to understand about dogs is they are what's called omnivores, meaning that they can live on both a meat and a vegetarian diet, similar to people. An important distinction is that cats are obligate carnivores, meaning they have to eat meat. They must have a meat-based diet because their protein requirements are so high. And so the answer is yes, you could feed your dog a vegan diet, whereas the answer for cats would be a hard no.

To elaborate on vegan diets for dogs, even though I say yes, they can, I would add that it would be particularly challenging. I would suggest that anybody interested in doing that, and it can be done, work with a veterinary nutritionist who can help formulate homemade vegan diets that meet all nutritional requirements. That's the big thing. Anytime we do home-cooked feeding, particularly something as specific as a vegan diet, there are a lot of opportunities for malnutrition that can harm your pet in the long run. So if you want to do that, please make sure you work with a board-certified veterinary nutritionist.

I'm not a human doctor, but the biggest difference is that when we think of allergies in humans, we think of sinus problems and pollens, among other things that lead to this issue. Dogs have those same issues, but people tend to respond to similar allergens that dogs do with sinus problems, whereas dogs primarily respond with skin problems. So I think that's the big distinguishing factor. It's the same thing with food allergies. Humans can also respond to food allergies with skin issues, but that's more commonly the primary presentation of food allergies in dogs.

Absolutely. That is actually the most common allergy we see when dealing with skin allergies in dogs. Humans would typically react to various things in the environment, such as pollen, and dogs would as well. Their immune systems react by causing inflammation in the skin. That disruption of the skin barrier leads to secondary infections in most cases.

We see seasonal allergies a lot. The complicating thing is that it'll just be seasonal in a lot of dogs because they're allergic to certain things determined by the season. But just because your dog has issues multiple times throughout the year or sometimes year-round doesn't mean that it's not "seasonal." By "seasonal," we mean environmental allergies. Because some dogs are allergic to so many things and the consequences are so severe, they will still have problems throughout the year, not just in the spring or summer. So it's not as clear-cut in that regard.

This is really important because I see this a lot with clients. They think their dog might have food allergies, and they use Dr. Google to try to discern what's going on. They then start switching their dog's food to various over-the-counter types of foods. That can potentially cause more problems in the long run because it exposes them to different proteins, which makes it harder to discern what the issue is.

The right way to identify a true food allergy, which is common in dogs, is to do what's called an elimination diet. That can be done in two different ways. The first is with a hydro protein diet, a prescription diet specifically created with the protein molecules broken into smaller pieces. That's what they mean by hydrolyzed. The pieces of the protein kind of go under the immune system's radar. The hope is that the immune system doesn't recognize them as foreign proteins leading it to respond negatively. This is the most common type of food trial we do because those foods are the most consistently readily available, and they tend to work really well.

The other type of food trial that can be done is called a novel protein food trial, which entails giving a protein that the dog has never been exposed to before. This can be challenging, and we'll have to make a thorough diet history. 10 years ago, people used kangaroo meat for this trial. I don't think it's used as much anymore because of the supply issue, but that would be a protein that dogs have never been exposed to before.

So we put them on a certain main protein to see if we can get the immune system not to respond to it. Both food trials are trying to find out what the immune system will be happy with. Other critical things to consider before you go with any one of these routes include that it is ideal if these are prescription-level diets. Because they are formulated specifically for this purpose, they undergo quality control to minimize or eliminate cross-contamination. This can really only be guaranteed on a prescription level. So prescription diets are definitely the best way to go when we're working through a food allergy. The other two big considerations are firstly making sure your pet ingests no other food when they're in the trial period, which typically lasts for eight to twelve weeks. Ensure they eat nothing but the specialized diet, no food dropping on the floor, no human food, and no eating other dogs' food. Just the specialized diet food, so that we can eliminate everything else.

At the end of that food trial of eight to twelve weeks, we reintroduce the old food for over a week in duration, although we don't always do this. This is the best way to definitively diagnose a food allergy. If the dog has a significant food allergy and has been doing much better on the new food, they will start responding negatively when the old would is reintroduced. That's how you definitively diagnose a dog with a food allergy. It's simple, but there are steps you have to follow in order to do it adequately, which can sometimes be a challenge.