Oleanderz, thank you for the kind words! You are such an eager-to-learn doggie mommy, it is awesome! 🙂
Ok, let me first say that I completely second Dori’s suggestion to NOT start rotating foods before she is well recovered from the surgery and back to normal, stool included. Sometimes stress, or the pain meds, can affect the stool, so if you had just started introducing a new brand of food, you wouldn’t know what’s causing the stool change.
But, after she has fully recovered from her surgery, you can start introducing and transitioning her to a new food of your choice. I think that no single dog food is perfect, and they do have varying amounts of protein, carbs, and fat, but all 4 brands are high-quality foods and will offer her a variety in the formulas, tastes, vitamins, etc. Like Dori said, if she’s gaining weight, feed her less, exercise her more; if she’s losing weight, feed her more, and still exercise her – she will be gaining muscle mass, which is healthy.
Now, for the rotation – it really depends on how her tummy’s taking it. Give it at least 10-14 days, adding a little bit of new food to the old at a time, and watching the stool – if stool is good for 2 days or so, add more new food, take more old food out, and so on. If stool is not good, back down the amount of new food, up the old food. When she gets used to rotating, you can switch brands with every big bag (what I do, but with small bags, lol). For now, you can switch to a brand, then exhaust most of the flavors within the brand just so she doesn’t have too many changes at once, then go to another brand. Also, you can add canned plain pumpkin to aid her digestion in the process, or a supplement called Perfect Form from The Honest Kitchen (THK). I swear up and down by it – anytime my Bruno has an upset tummy, it tightens him back up in a snap! But don’t overuse the Perfect Form – use it only as needed, and the amounts to feed are on the package, as well as on THK’s website. Which leads me to…
… if feeding Perfect Form with kibble, you will need to add some water to it. It will look like a greenish soup of kibble, lol. But, with that said, extra moisture added to dry kibble is always good for the dog. You can add plain lukewarm water, yoghurt/kefir, coconut oil and water, or canned food (and water). Any mix of kibble and canned is fine as long as the dog’s tummy is ok with it. So introduce the canned slowly, and not while transitioning between brands. You can also add dehydrated/freeze-dried/air-dried foods and water to kibble as toppers too, canned sardines (no salt added, in water only), fresh vegetables and meats, some fruits, and the above suggestions. Make sure you add NO onions or any grape products (grapes, raisins), some mushrooms.
Finally, where to find Victor dog food: sportdogfood.com Victor GF and Farmina N&D GF are the best options, but Farmina is on the pricy side. Victor is pretty affordable.
Oh, and for the boxes – hope she gets some flying discs in her BarkBox or whatever other boxes she gets! 🙂
Ok, sorry for the novel… Good luck, keep us posted, and let us know if you have any more questions! 🙂
