I am new to the forums and I am hoping you all can help me out. My chocolate lab puppy is almost 18 weeks old now. The food we have him on know is the ProPLan forcus puppy. I was hoping to keep him on the same food as our other dog for convenience but unfortunately he keeps having diarrhea. He has been to his vet to rule out any internal issues (Tried various medications) so it has been narrowed down to the food. Anyone have any recommendations? The food choices are overwhelming. I brought home a bag of Taste of the wild puppy yesterday and got in trouble for it being grain free as my wife is a vet tech for the veterinarian we take our animals to and the FDA report has stirred up a lot of concerns.
Elephant in the room...if your wife is a vet tech, has she made any suggestions? Captain has been eating Eukanuba large breed puppy kibble. No problems unless he gets into something we should have had away from him. Hopefully your pup gets better soonest.
Hi Tylus, Welcome to the forum! I wouldn't want to make a specific recommendation for a puppy that has had digestive problems, the vet is definitely the best placed to give you advice there, however you can find lots more information on feeding Lab puppies here that might be of interest: https://www.thelabradorsite.com/feeding-your-labrador-puppy/
Hi there, and welcome to the forum. Food choices are indeed overwhelming! It might be wise to stay away from grain free dog food for now, until the situation with regard to heart disease has been clarified. If your vet suspects a food allergy, avoiding one meat protein (beef for example) at a time is probably worth a try. Alternatively you might want to consider raw feeding which most dogs do very well on.
Thank you all for the replies. Our Vet recommended trying a couple of different brands. We are currently in the process of switching him over to Royal Canin Labrador Puppy. We shall see how it goes once he is fully transitioned over. There is a possibility the cause may be that I cant seem to get him to stop eating the chicken poop in the back yard either.
Hello there, I have just posted my first thread about this same issue lol. I won’t repeat myself so just take a look for more in-depth info. But basically I have had my Lab on a mega cheap puppy food called Wagg Puppy, all has been absolutely perfect, as he is now 15 months I tried to change gradually to a wheat free version of the same brand Wagg. Disaster! Anyway, I have changed back until I have concluded more research but basically everything is back to perfect! Maybe it just works fir him but if you found a puppy food that works for yours I wouldn’t even contemplate a change unless there are problems with it. I’m defo a Wagg Puppy fan but just thought it was too cheap & I could do better for him when moving to an ‘adult’ food! Stu.
Issues like these occur just because the dog's digestive system has not been used to eating anything except for one brand of kibble - ever. This is not a reason to keep them on that brand of kibble - dogs (like humans!) need variety and no human or dog came 'designed' to eat little brown pellets... Since there are ever-increasing issues with various dry foods, the best and safest way to feed a kibble is to rotate and not to feed one particular brand for too long. This ensures that any surplus or lack of a particular nutrient is compensated for, over time. I would work at introducing foods which are going to improve his microbiome first, so that will support any change in diet you might make - like adding a small amount of kefir to each meal, canine probiotics, and pumpkin powder (also a prebiotic) and then very gradually making the change to a new food whilst continuing the supplements.
