This is the advice you get from vets and it’s printed on the label of every dog food (that I have examined)–transition to a new kind of food by slowly mixing in greater amounts of the new food until you’ve phased out the old. I ignored the advice since it was pretty clear that the brand we were using (given to us by the adoption place) was causing diarrhea, and everything was fine.
Why exactly are you supposed to transition over a period of days when dogs will eat literally anything including shit without apparent ill effect? Why should switching from one overly expensive brand of kibble to another be especially disruptive to a dog’s digestive system?
Posting in IMHO because I’m curious to hear the experiences of other dog owners as well as any science on this.
Some dogs can get the shits from changing food too fast and some have more delicate digestions than others. I’ve never had anything but the “eat anything that doesn’t eat me” variety of dog so can’t help you with personal anecdata.
I did not know this. I have a habit of snagging big bags of dog food from the discount bin (they get a hole in the bag, the store tapes them up and sells them half-off). I avoid the crappy no-name stuff and stick to the “expensive” stuff, but just feed the crew whatever in on hand. Right now, there is at least 5 different brands of chow in the back room.
Never seem to have a problem, but then again, they hunt and eat mice, cat poop, chicken feathers- whatever they can get their little teeth into. Vet says they are the healthiest Dachshunds he’s ever seen. Very fit and active.
My dogs have never been picky and will eat anything.
But my cats need that transition period. I’ve switched foods on them and while they eat it it often upsets their stomachs. So I do the mixing thng. But when they get used to the different foods there’s no problem.
Cats, amirite? They are different kettle of fish.
I have a beagle who will eat anything, I mean anything. She doesn’t care if it upsets her tummy she still begs for it. I was peeling sweet potatoes and she was begging so I fed her some peelings. She gobbled them down, went in the other room and barfed and came back and begged for more. Dummy. OTOH, my Yorkie has to be coaxed to eat anything. I have never done a 7-10 day transitioning with any dog.
Most of my dogs switch just fine. I do have one that has truly spectacular diarrhea if he’s just switched without a transition period.
The theory I’ve heard is that if you feed a dog only one thing for weeks or months, and then change it, their system needs time to adjust. Anecdotally, I find that dogs who are fed a mixed diet are less likely to have issues.
My dogs have been known to get real flatulent when changing food. My dogs sleep in my bedroom so, yeah, we take it slow if we change their food.
The dog, however, does not care if he’s flatulent and he will eat anything. Cat food, pieces of highly seasoned barbacoa that fell on the floor, random hot dogs left by constructor workers (he LOVES construction sites, he gravitates toward them on walks).
The worst was when someone left about three-quarters of a pound of cheese in a place where he could reach it. Yes. He ate all the cheese. That was a bad bad night. I think that time he didn’t even feel very good. I also think he would do it again.
My first dog was weird he liked the no name dirt cheap food … I bought the good stuff and hed eat it once or twice and then not eat much until I gave him it back … I mixed it so not to waste the food …….
my moms dog loved milk … mom threw a party and poured a big 64 oz glass of a premixed Pina colada and she slurped down it down …… dog was drunk for a while and then was death warmed over the next day …
did it stop her ? hell no she just drank anything that smelled of milk and coconut after that ….
My dog is on a grain free diet, and sweet potatoes are used in a lot of the things I buy for her. She loves it. Treats, food- if it says sweet potato on the label it’s a safe bet that she’ll love it.
I feed my dogs a Costco brand grain free food that’s salmon and sweet potato based and they really like it, have small compact poops and very few digestive irregularities, although the young dog is a gobblehound who has to use a slow-down-dog bowl and sometimes does a vomit launch from eating too fast. Other than that she’s apparently impervious to food related problems and is a lightning fast floor scavenger whose first learned phrase after she came to me was “floor score!” She likes to go cruising through the compost pile too and thinks tough asparagus ends are the bees knees for a random snack.
We had an Anatolian Shepherd who was constantly shaking her head and pawing at her ears but it wasn’t ear mites. DesertRoomie, who was a vet-tech, very closely examined her ears and said the canals were awfully small for such a big dog, “I’ll bet it’s the damn corn.”
We looked for grain-free kibble but it was awfully expensive, then I noticed one of the Kirkland varieties had wheat middlings but no corn for a more reasonable price. We switched her to it and the ear trouble stopped.
I switch my dogs’ food once in a while. I’ve never done a gradual change. They’ve never had any ill effects. They also eat deer and rabbit poop without getting sick! But some dogs do have sensitive stomachs. So I can understand the reasoning behind it.
A dog gets used to whatever it eats. If it eats poop all the time, it gets used to eating poop. If it eats a wide variety of dog foods, it gets used to the variety. If it eats trash, it gets used to trash. But if it just eats one kind of food for years, it gets used to eating that kind of food.
You don’t have to transition. As you’ve noticed, dogs will eat anything at anytime. But their digestive systems may take time to adapt and their stools may be much looser during that process.
I’ve never transitioned my dogs, but they do get table scraps sometimes so a variety of foods on a day to day basis. The backstop food at the moment is Purina One Turkey and Venison but they’ve also had Lamb and Rice, with swaps between them without gradual changeover.
Sometimes one or another of them does have diarrhoea, but it never seems to be related to the food they get from me. They are awful scavengers though, so you just can’t control everything they eat. Right now, there are a lot of immature pears falling from the tree in the back yard and they chow down on those with great relish. As the apples get bigger, they will start on them too.
