Hello, Missie and Maisie! Welcome to DFA!
Good thing you’re trying to keep Maisie’s weight under control! I have reduced my Bruno’s portions over the winter due to lack of exercise also. So you don’t NECESSARILY have to use a weight-management food, you can also simply reduce the calories from regular food by reducing the amount to induce weight-loss, or weight maintenance.
As for the mixing of foods, myself and other forumers have done it and some probably still do. I also have a friend who feeds her pack of 5 dogs nothing but various mixes, and I used to do it myself, until I realized that with just one small 15-lb terrier mix, any mix of even just 2 small bags of food, even if they’re different flavors or brands, will produce 8-10lbs of a “single-flavor” food that my Bruno will have to eat twice as long as a “single-flavor” food for 1 month and then a different single-flavor food for another month. Does this make sense? Basically, once you mix and feed the food day in and day out for a while, the dog will taste different bites, but in its head, it is all the same food because it’s served together kind of. Like, if you ate beef and salmon (surf and turf) for two months – it is still different proteins and different ways to cook the salmon and the beef, with different “spices”, but overall it is one dish. Next two months, you would be eating chicken and pork (for example), two separate recipes, but in one dish. Vs. one month beef, one month salmon, one month chicken, one month pork, etc. Nutritionally though, if you mix separate brands and flavors, that will expose it to more protein variety and vitamin and mineral composition, which is good. That is what my friend does, she always mixes different brands AND flavors, and that’s kind of what I used to do (I would mix same flavors, different brands – brand A chicken + brand B chicken). The only other caveat to mixing is that should Maisie get sick on a mix, you wouldn’t be able to tell which food made her sick (unless you give each food about 2 weeks separately to be sure that neither makes her sick), and you would not be able to alert the manufacturer(s) because you wouldn’t know which made her sick, so you also wouldn’t be able to return their food for testing and/or a refund. This is another reason I stopped mixing and now I just switch foods with every small bag (more or less).
I would probably look for a food that while I’m transitioning to it, my dog has better stools and less gas, and hope that when I fully feed it, the results will stay the same. But, you can do what you think is best for Maisie. 🙂
