Soaking Dry Dog Food??

[wendykei]

In the health forum, I posted recently about Sidney (my 3 1/2 month old pup) and his vomiting problems. The vomiting seemed to be tied to his puppy kibble (Eukanuba medium breed), so I switched him to bland canned food from the vet and am transitioning to California Natural.

I heard from someone recently that soaking dry kibble is another way to help with upset tummies...? Any truth to that or am I better off sticking with canned (provided that he keeps it down better of course)?

[gmacleod]

Soaking kibble seems to make it a bit more palatable for young puppies, who don't seem to really recognise dry kibble as food. Possibly it also makes it a bit easier for them to eat during teething too. Can't say I've heard reports of it being any easier to diegest that way though.

The only caution I'd make about pre-soaking kibble is that you should check the preservative used before doing so. There is a wealth of veterinary university research that shows that pre-soaking kibble that is preserved with citric acid greatly increases the risk of bloat (gastric volvulous/torsion). Granted, that research is valid only for large or deep chested breeds - since they were the ones studied. But I don't think it's wise to take the risk just because the breed is not a large one (ie. we don't know that the findings of that research aren't valid also for small breeds).

Note that there's nothing wrong with citric acid as a preservative (it's naturally occuring and doesn't have nasty cancerous side effects like many chemical preservatives do), but it should not be pre-soaked.

I'm pretty sure that California Natural uses ascorbic acid as a preservative, so it probably isn't an issue for you anyway. No idea about the Eukanuba though, so it would pay to check before you wet the kibble ;)

[wendykei]

judy and gwyneth: many thanks for the info as always!

[wendykei]

another question on the same issue... what about mixing dry food with wet food? if you do want to mix the two, do you need to add the dry to wet (or vice versa) using the graduated approach?

[wendykei]

Wanted to add: I keep hearing different things from different people about the benefits of various types of food. I don't want to change foods haphazardly or give Sidney something of lower quality.

I'm considering the raw diet, but the full BARF regiment sounds complicated to a novice (I don't cook and rarely eat meat, so some of these chicken and other animal parts, etc.--wow, I would have no idea where to get them or which parts to feed!) And it sounds from some of the messages like there's not as much benefit from using a pre-packaged raw diet..... Anyways, that's just to provide some additional context to my question.