Spice Up Your Life

style=”text-align: left;”>Yeah! You heard me. the Humans expect us dog’s to eat the same kibbles, day after day, month after month, year after year. If we have to do it, they should too! Some dog’s eat the same thing every day for a whole lifetime. Wow. How freaking boring would that be?! Never mind how boring that must be, but does it even sound healthy?

Nutritionally Complete means that a product can serve as the sole source of nutrition. A product that is nutritionally complete can be fed every day, for an entire lifetime and it will maintain basic health. Can it maintain optimal health? There are plenty of human breakfast cereals out there designed to be nutritionally complete. What if your human ate nothing but cereal for the next six months? How would they feel? For sure, it will keep them going, but will they be at their best? Will they feel fit & fabulous? It doesn’t seem likely. While a nutritionally complete food can provide everything you or your dog needs to survive, we don’t believe that it can provide everything needed to create fabulous health.

Humans have known this for years. From the time they are young, humans are told to eat a ton of different foods in order to be healthy. They say that your body will even crave foods that have the nutrients your body needs. The human diet is balanced over time.

Balanced over Time means that every day you have something different. Each day may not be complete, but over the course of the day, the week or the month, you get everything you need. Lots of home-cooked and raw diets are balanced over time. You get different meats, different vegetables and different stuff all the time. As long as you are feeding a variety of foods and supplementing with a few key minerals & vitamins, over time, the diet will balance itself out.

The concern some humans have with this is that they aren’t comfortable balancing the diet. They worry that in trying to make their pup healthier, they might actually make it worse. We can absolutely understand that. So what can you do?

The Compromise

Want to provide variety, but not ready to take the plunge and cook at home or feed raw? Consider a kibble rotation to spice up your dog’s life. At our house, there are four or five brands that we buy in a bunch of flavours. We rotate these kibbles, buying a different kind every time we shop. It is pretty rare that we eat the same thing two months in a row.

I know what you’re thinking. “But Kolchak! If I switch foods that won’t I get an upset tummy?”

Well, maybe. Imagine if your human ate chicken and rice every day for a year. Now, imagine that, out of no where, they ate a steak and mashed potatoes. What would happen? They’d be spending some good quality time in the bathroom. The same thing goes for you. If you abruptly switch to a new food, your tummy will get all shaken up and revolt. They key is to add in the new food a little at a time over a period of a couple weeks.

Starting a kibble rotation doesn’t have to be difficult! Here are our tips for setting up a fun and easy kibble rotation.

• Buy the appropriate size bag for your dog. Don’t buy the 40 lb. bag, if you have a 4 lb. dog. kibble oxidizes and loses nutrition over time, plus the bigger the bag, the longer your dog will take to finish it.
• Rotate the type of protein and carbohydrate. Try to serve something different with every new bag. We particularly love finding foods with interesting novel proteins like rabbit or buffalo.
• No brand allegiance here! We change brands every single time. There are lots of great foods out there, why not try them all?
• Try to match the nutritional analysis. If you are feeding a low-carb/high protein food, try to create a rotation of similar foods. Jumping from a low protein food to a high protein or vice versa will affect your health & energy.
• Don’t Rush It. Two weeks before you need to, pick up a new bag and mix it into the old kibble a little at a time. If you move to fast, your tummy will get upset.

New kibble day is a big deal at our house. Felix and I get so excited when the Mama pulls out that new bag of a new flavour. That look of excitement alone is enough to convince the Mama we LOVE variety and we bet your dog would love it too!

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