My Boxer puppy is thin. Is his homemade beef and rice diet balanced?

Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach! Feeding twice daily is fine as long as Caster is receiving his recommend amount of calories per day. I recommend the majority of his diet consists of the Royal Canin as that has the proper balance of vitamins and minerals for a growing dog and the human diet does not. The Royal Canin should have a place on the label for recommended feeding amounts for his age and weight. Kisses to Caster!

The Royal Canin Giant Starter is a balanced diet on it's own. You do not need to, nor should you, feed anything else. Fruits are not good - too high in sugar. The egg and cottage cheese are probably fine but really not necessary. I understand you may be vegetarian but please understand that dogs are not and they need meat in order to survive. My recommendation is to only feed the Royal Canin. He doesn't appear to be too thin in the photos.

Hi there. If you are feeding a nutritionally complete and balanced commercial diet from a reputable company such as Purina, Iams, Hills, or Royal Canin, there is no need to supplement the diet with other things. You can give small amounts of meat or vegetables as a treat, as long as these "extras" don't comprise more than 10% of the total diet.

Hi there. No, this is not okay - Rio needs to be on a nutritionally complete and balanced diet designed for dogs. What you are describing is not healthy for him, and puts him at risk of developing a variety of different health problems due to nutritional imbalances and deficiencies. I would recommend feeding a good quality commercial dog food from a reputable company such as Purina, Hills, or Royal Canin. If you prefer to cook for your dog at home, that's fine - but it needs to be a diet formulated to meet his nutritional needs, not something you make up yourself. In that case, you can use the website www.balanceit.com to put together appropriate recipes using ingredients of your choosing, or consult with a veterinary nutritionist about formulating a custom diet for him. You can find more information on how to do this here: https://acvn.org/nutrition-consults/

Hello. By homely, do you mean a homemade diet? If so, it is very difficult to prepare a diet that has all the vitamins, minerals, amino acids & proper balance of protein, carbohydrates & fats that meets a dogs nutritional needs. Royal Canin is an excellent food, so I would really try to maintain this. If you truly want to do a homemade diet, then I encourage you to visit this site that will help you to develop a nutritionally sound diet plan. Thanks for using PetCoach. https://securebalanceit.com/

It sounds like she could be too thin. Here is a link to a body score chart so you can compare. You may need to increase her feeding to 1 cup each feeding and see if she puts on some weight. https://vet.osu.edu/vmc/sites/default/files/images/Body%20condition%20score%20chart%20dogs_0.pdf

It can be hard for owners to know what a good weight is for a pet. So many pets we see on a daily basis on overeeight so it skews our perception. In determining if a pet is at a healthy weight, I look at three things. There should be a thin covering over the ribs (you don't want to be digging through a fat covering to feel them). There should be a distinct waist when viewed from the top and the abdomen needs to tug up tightly from the side view. You only want a dog to lose 1-2% of its body weight per week . Tbis5 is only about one third of a pound at Scrappy's current weight. As long as Scrappy doesn't have any underlying kidney disease the protein content of this diet is fine. You can offer ice cubes, fresh carrots or green beans for low calorie snacks. Make sure he gets plenty of exercise. It sounds like you are off to a good start. Keep it up!