Change in Diet, Change in Poop

Last week’s canine nutrition tip from expert Tracie Hotchner dealt with “Worrying About Dog Poop.” This week, Tracie explains the change you might see in your dog’s bowel movements if you change him from an all-kibble diet:

Imagine someone in a refugee camp who has been living on bread and rice – what will happen to their bowel movements if you suddenly give them real meat, fruits and vegetables? You can be sure there will be a period of intestinal upset while the digestive system is reawakened and the friendly bacteria in the stomach have a chance to repopulate. If the person has frequent or loose stools as a result of getting onto real quality food, that is a sign that what they were eating previously was a pretty impoverished diet. But that certainly doesn’t mean they should quickly revert to the low-nutrition diet that put their digestive system to sleep in the first place! The same is true of dogs on an all-kibble diet. It’s an unbalanced, unnatural diet for a carnivorous omnivore and not fully nutritious. Can a dog survive on it? Of course. Can he thrive on it? Commonsense tells you that real protein and vegetables will round out that all-carb diet into one that makes logical sense.

This Canine Nutrition Tip is from Tracie Hotchner, author of The Dog Bible and award-winning host of Dog Talk® on NPR station WLIU. Canine Nutrition Tips are sponsored by Proportions, the whole food custom nutrition program for your dog. Visit www.Proportions.com to get a custom 2-meal trial for your dog, or to learn more about canine nutrition from the full Canine Nutrition University classes written by Tracie.

Author photo courtesy www.traciehotchner.com; photo © Ling Li

About Paris Permenter and John Bigley

DogTipper publishers Paris Permenter and John Bigley are a husband-wife team of full-time writers. The couple has authored over two dozen books and 2,500+ magazine articles.

• Mail
|
• Twitter
|
• Facebook
|
• Google+
|
• More Posts (5416)

You might also like these posts: