My dog has an upset stomach. Is my homemade food safe and balanced?

Thats hard to say. Pets can have upset stomachs for many reasons. This can range from bacterial over growth, to parasites, to inflammatory bowel disease to kidney disease to even cancer. Without a physical exam and likely some basic diagnostics, its impossible to know the cause. Home made diets are not good long term unless they are formulated by a veterinary nutritionist. Otherwise the diets are often unbalanced which can result in problems if they are fed long term. At home you can try feeding her a bland diet of 25% boiled white meat chicken and 75% plain boiled what rice. Feed this for 1 week. Giving her probiotics during this time may also help. If she is not back to normal after 1 week, if she gets worse or if it returns, she needs to see her veterinarian. This diet is not balanced but it is fine to feed for this length of time. Gradually transition her back to her normal diet over 3-5 days. I hope this is helpful and please feel free to post any additional questions.

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/

If you decide to do a homecooked diet for Bruiser, you will need to make sure it is a balanced diet. There are a few ways to do that. You could do a consulation with a board certified nutritionist (a veterinarian who has done additional residency training in nurition). One company that offers this service is called Balance It. You can order their vitamin/mineral mix or have a recipe made specially for Bruiser. Another option would be to find a local vet that can help you design a diet for Bruiser. Since I see from your zip code that you are in central Florida, if you are interested in Traditional Chinese Medicine, you might consider seeing Dr. Bartholomew at the Animal Hospital of Dunedin to have him design a diet for Bruiser based on Traditional Chinese Medicine. I hope that answers your question. Thank you for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach.

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/

Hi, thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach! Poor Cloey! When it comes to dog food I'm in the camp that "if it's not broken , why fix it?" So for Cloey, if she as doing well, not vomiting, diarrhea, her weight is good and she liked the Pure Balance then I think it is fine for her. It is definitely likely that changing her food abruptly has caused the diarrhea, that is a a very common cause of an upset stomach. I would feed her a bland diet of boiled chicken and beef with rice until the stool is normal. Then I would put her back on her old dog food. I hope this helps and I wish Cloey the very best!

Good on you for reaching out for help with getting help with possibly doing a homemade diet. The problem with them is that is very difficult to get the correct balance of nutrients a dog needs to be healthy, and many times homemade diets are very lacking for the dog. I can give you two websites that have recipes for balanced and healthy homemade diets you can make for Zeus. Keep in mind that the homemade diet may not keep him from eating too fast, leading to gas and upset stomach. Instead of switching to a homemade diet, you can try feeding him out of a slow feeder bowl, or you can put large rocks he can't swallow in his food bowl. Either of those will help slow him down as he eats, preventing him from eating too fast and developing gas and an upset stomach.

Hi there. If you're interested in preparing a home-cooked diet for Gizmo, I would recommend using a website like www.balanceit.com or www.petdiets.com to formulate appropriate recipes for him that are complete and balanced, to ensure that he's getting the nutrition he needs. :)