[Hound Dog Mom]

Hi glavoie –

I personally recommend keeping dogs on either a “growth”/”all life stages” food for life. There are a few quality foods labeled for “maintenance” (likely due to simply to the company’s marketing preferences), but the best foods are generally going to be growth/all life stages formulas. Maintenance formulas tend to be too low and protein and fat and there’s no reason the quality of a dog’s food needs to be reduced just because they end the growth phase. Once your pup is around 8 – 10 months or so you can, however, stop monitoring calcium levels so closely – at this age pups are through their most rapid phase of growth and gain the ability to regulate calcium absorption.