Are hot dogs ok for my 4 1/2 month Yorkie?!?!?

[BabyBrizzy]

Originally Posted by 107barney

If you are feeding your puppy home cooked food you need to make sure you are properly balancing the meals. In addition, most veterinary nutritionists will dissuade you from feeding home cooked to dogs under 1 year of age. I fed my pups home cooked exclusively for the first 5 years of their lives then used dog food 50/50 with it. Now we are back on 100% home cooked.

Balancing the diet is not easy nor cheap but it is very important. Your dog's nutritional needs are different than ours. Long term problems may be brewing if you are not doing this properly. There are resources on the internet from credible sources (i.e. veterinary nutritionists) for you to read and learn about home cooking for your dog. I just used the Welcome to Pet Diets site run by a prominent New England veterinary nutritionist to formulate a diet for Teddy, a healthy 16 month old dog (cost is $25). I did it so I could use the supplement "Balance It" rather than individual supplements as I've done all these years. The site will not let you pull a diet for a pup under 1 year old.

As for foods for variety - you can give fresh raw veggies (except onions/garlic) as treats. Mine seem to really like green beans, carrots, baby spinach, broccoli, bell peppers.

Thank you very much! I have always wanted to get my pups away from dog food. I will have to try this site!

[107barney]

You're welcome! The "Balance It" site also let's you do diets and that is where you can purchase the balance it product. www.balanceit.com
I went with the www.petdiets.com site for Teddy's since my two other dogs are on special medical diets that this nutritionist formulated for them.

There are quite a few of us on YT that do home cooking and everyone will agree that balancing the diet correctly is of the UTMOST importance. After doing the individual supplements for years and baking eggshells back in the day.... It was a no-brainer for me to buy the balance it for our dogs. I just started it this week and so far so good, no one is having any adverse consequences. It was kind of funny to be roasting a pan of chicken breasts for Barney and Teddy and then off in the corner of the oven pan were two lone chicken breasts for me and hubby! What we do for these dogs!! LOLOL