Just like you and me, dogs require protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and minerals. And what I recommend is choosing a commercial dog food that has been pre rationed, predetermined, and has gone through the AFCO recommendations to be a suitable, fully-rationed diet for your pet. When we do those home-cooked diets, it can be challenging to ensure that we're getting everything that they absolutely need into those diets. And so the commercial brand foods are wonderful.

Right around when most dogs hit that one-year mark, or for some of the larger breed dogs that may be as late as 18 months, we like to transition them over to any adult formulated diet. You’ll surely see some foods out there that are made for quote unquote, all life stages. But I would encourage you to look for a dog food that's more geared towards the adult life stage instead of all life stages. Selecting a good quality adult dog food from a brand you trust is the best thing that you can do.

We get asked that a lot. The best food for a puppy is puppy food. It is formulated to meet all of their nutritional needs and requirements. As they grow, they need more minerals and vitamins in a higher ratio than adult dogs do. Puppy foods also tend to be more calorie-dense, which is great for puppies. Most of you who have puppies know that they like to burn a lot of energy, so they need that higher caloric intake and those foods provide that.

Obviously, if you catch your dog in the act, definitely try to figure out what it is. As I said, that ASPCA website is a massive help to pet owners. It's very reliable and easily accessible through the internet. If you're not sure and they start showing some symptoms, look for clues around your house or maybe torn corners of bags or food boxes or things like that. The best thing to do, though, is to try to keep all of that stuff way up in cabinets or off the countertops to keep your dog safe.

We use elimination diets if we're trying to figure out if your pet is sensitive to a specific protein. So you often hear this as a food allergy. And so, what we're trying to do with an elimination diet is figure out what specific protein your pet is allergic to. So it may be that we have you take out all of the things with chicken, or maybe we have you take out all the things with beef. Your vet may recommend a completely hypoallergenic diet that has a plant-based protein like soy. But the best thing to do is get strict guidance from your veterinarian, and they can walk you through how to work that elimination diet step by step.

You’d mostly see a lot of diarrhea, so we recommend making that food transition over at least seven days. Because if you think about it, your dog's GI microflora, those happy bacteria that live in their GI tract, generally sees the same thing day in and day out. And when we make a sudden change, those guys are like, whoa, what is going on here? And it can cause some changes in the consistency of their stool and possibly some vomiting. Dogs’ systems don't like that change, so we want to make that transition slow.