Dr. Clayton Greenway discusses tips and advice on how to feed a puppy so that they will remain good eaters long-term. Other topics covered in this video include feeding specific meals, feeding timed meals vs following the instructions on the label by weight, monitoring the response, and using our weight management tool.

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TRANSCRIPT:

I’m going to talk to you about how to feed a puppy. I get a lot of questions about this. People don’t know whether to feed two times a day, three times a day, leave the food out and how much food do I feed my puppy?

I like to feed specific meals, you want to put down the bowl and you want to pick it up later. You don’t want to leave it out and turn your pet into a grazer and the reason why is in the future you may have to give a supplement or medication and you want to put it in that single meal. You also want to be able to monitor whether your dog ate well or not and by feeding specific meals, you’ll be able to do that so by starting them off on the right foot and doing that, that’s the best thing to do.

Sometimes, just like with kids, they don’t have an appetite one morning, they don’t have an appetite in the evening but it will generalize across multiple meals. So putting down that food for 20 minutes each time, letting that puppy eat as much as they want and then picking the food up is a really good way to feed your puppy as well.

Looking at the bag for those guidelines can tell you if you’re within the right zone. You can also use our weight management tool to track your puppy’s weight and you can of course go by your veterinarian and make sure that its body condition is looking good.

You’ll find on our website that there is body condition scoring and you’ll see videos and information on that as well so you can go there to look at an ideal weight and how to judge that in your puppy. That will help you know if you are feeding it properly as you go along here. So you’ll find these resources and more about puppy care here at healthcareforpets.com.