The overall health and wellness of your pet is supported by great nutrition. What you put into your own body is just as important for your cat or dog. The food aisle in pet stores can be overwhelming when it comes to choosing the best dog food or cat food for your pet as there are so many brands with a majority claiming to contain the best things for them. The brightly colored aesthetic looking bag catches our eye and ends up in our cart. But how do we know if it actually is healthy for your furry companion or did the brand just have great marketing?
When it comes to choosing the right dog food or cat food for your pet there are a lot of categories to consider. The brands we generally recommend are those with veterinary diets which include Hill’s Science Diet, Purina Pro Plan, Royal Canin, and Eukanuba. These brands have both prescription diets as well as over the counter diets. We feel comfortable recommending these brands because they have veterinary nutritionists on staff. The diets are formulated based on research and by people whose careers are dedicated to this field. They also have much stricter regulations on what each diet contains which is very beneficial for pets who have allergies. These regulations are also helpful from a safety standpoint; the production of the diet is so closely monitored that if there is anything altered with the formulation of a certain batch of food the company will issue a recall for it.
The nice thing about choosing a veterinary diet is that you can in most cases tailor it to your pet’s specific needs. Whether you are trying to nourish their joints early on, support their skin health in the fight with allergies, or help their body with a food tailored for a specific disease process, these diets can make an impactful change in how your pet feels. One thing to remember in all of this is that depending on the purpose of the diet, it can take up to 8-12 weeks of consistent feeding to have the desired effect of the food.
We are here to support you and your pet when deciding what food is best for them. There are numerous online resources available to pet owners when making decisions such as Petfoodology through Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University. For cat nutrition specifically, Dr. Lisa Pierson has a great resource available called CatInfo.org. We are also available for any questions you have about ordering your dog food or cat food, acquiring a prescription for the prescription veterinary diets, or doing a food calculation to find out the specific amount that is appropriate for your pet. We also like to remind our clients there are online ordering options for Hill’s Prescription Diets and Purina Pro Plan. As always give us a call if you have any questions!
