Advice on food

Hi Everyone

New to the site and was after some advice on food please.

I have a 2 1/2 old staffy and he has a sensitive stomach. We were feeding him pedigree chum loaf mixed in with some dry biscuits and his poo was always fairly big but always very soft but it always looked like he had a upset stomach so we changed his wet food to some natural wet food purchased at the vets which someone recommended and he loves it. A lady at work suggested i fed him puffed rice mixed in with the wet as all her dogs are on that and she bought me some in to try. I then tried him on that and it was amazing he loved it and his poo without fail came out to what we would say was normal (not to hard but solid) only problem i found he was not going as much as he did and the size of them was ALOT smaller - so is this bad ? is he getting like a back log if you get what i mean.

Since then i have just had him castrated nearly a week ago and after the op he had a really bad stomach for 2 days consisting of going out every half hour with very bad diarrhoea water and has not been able to keep down his food. I took him back to the vets who gave him a injection and some paste and antibiotics and since then he has been back to his normal self. We have fed him his normal wet food but mixed in with some dry biscuits and he is back to going to the toilet which is very soft and lots of it ( just a big pile)

Hope this makes sense to someone lol I just want whats best for him and him to be happy. He came from a very bad backround and has settled in lovely and certainly gave me a new lease of life as i love taking him out and seeing his progress ( unfortunately he is my first dog so still learning what is normal etc )

Kind Regards

Ok, don't worry about asking any questions here, the only daft one is the one you don't ask. Loose stools after an op is not unusual as having any sedative is likely to upset them in that way.

Now to answer the question on food, the less they go and the smaller the amount generally means that whatever you're feeding them is being absorbed as energy, so think less wastage. Pedigree isn't really a good quality food so try looking for a better choice (there's a link here somewhere that compares foods from different manufacturers, I'll try and find and post it for you). The better the food the less poo and hence the more nutrition.

Having said all that, you might find that some foods upset his tum and therefore don't suit so you might need to experiment a little but I would suggest certainly moving off pedigree.

I should add, how fab does Louie look

Yeah i did get told about pedigree chum food some said its too rich. I have changed him onto something called Natural complete which i purchase from my vets (not sure if they sell it anywhere else as i only got it as i was there. He loves it his eyes are popping out of his head when he see that come out lol. So me mixing that with the puffed rice seems like a good idea. Have you heard of the puffed rice before ? No pet store sells it and can only get it on a few sites , i believe its called judges choice puffed rice.

Try this site as a starter https://www.allaboutdogfood.co.uk

I think there's another so bare with me while I try to find it again

i've never heard of puffed rice, but i assume it's added as a 'filler' as rice has very little nutritional content.

to be honest, if you're feeding a quality food that 'agrees' with your dog, you shouldn't need any extras.

one good 'wet' food is NatureDiet which is not only sold in the pet stores but also in Wilkinsons. it contains no wheat/grains & most of them contain ground bone which is really good for a dog.

http://www.wilko.com/dog-food+accessories/wet-dog-food/icat/wetdogfood