Gun Dog Forum

Puppy is a very quick eater and always wants more. If you give more, he will eat it and look for more. However, giving him more food will eventually lead to soft/wet poops and needing to poop more often. He is skinny and you can feel ribs, backbones and hips, but healthy and active. Reduce the amount of food and his poop will firm up. Gradually give slightly more food and he does o.k., but there's a point where another incremental amount will be too much and the soft poop will return. He would like to eat more and I think he could use a little more food. Have several ideas:

1. Add a calorie booster such as Dyne to increase calories without the added bulk of more food.
2. Continue to add more food to his bowl, but add canned pumpkin to keep stool firm.
3. Same as #2 but use psyllium instead of pumpkin.
4. Switch to a higher calorie, higher protein/fat food.
5. Add some canned food for additional calories.
5. Pup is 16 weeks old and the soft stool may be the onset of teething and none of the above matters.

Dogs can appear healthy and still have worms....Has pup been checked for worms?

And what are you feeding now?

From my experience:
1. Healthy pups should be a bit skinny, they will eventually reach their full potential.
2. Don’t need to add anything to the dogs food provided it is a quality food from a quality company. Additions can cause more harm than just leaving the ration alone.
3. High energy medium breed pups do better on a higher protein/fat food either puppy or performance all life stages.
4. Feed smaller meals more often for a hard keeper
5. What the dog looks like is more important than what it’s poop looks like.
6. Make sure they are on a worming schedule. (I use safeguard goat wormer)

Dog has been checked for worms.

Purina Puppy Chow Complete ME 3781 kcal/kg 443 kcal per cup

Have also thought about adding a small meatball of Satin Balls to his kibble or Bil Jac Frozen

What breed is your pup? Purina Puppy Chow is 27/12, may want to look at something closer to the 30/20 range. Many thousands of sporting dog pups have been raised on Purina Pro Plan Performance. Again don’t add anything to throw off the ratios that have been proven to work properly. Save your money on fecal test which often give a negative result and look up how to worm your dog on a schedule with something like safeguard. Many worms and parasites don’t always show up in lab tests but they almost always die when the proper dose of worming medication is given on a schedule.

Not a gun dog. Bernese Mountain Dog. Nowhere near as active as a sporting breed or smaller breed pups.

Wow, that changes things. Bernese pups should be on a Large Breed Puppy food, or food where the bag says on the AAFCO label that it is formulated for dogs that will grow over 70lbs, it will have reduced Calcium/Phosphourus and fat levels to slow growth. Not sure if Puppy chow says that or not. My parents have raised three of them on their small avocado farm, it is very important that these dogs grow slow. We have never had an issue keeping them at a slim appropriate weight on either Purina Large Breed Puppy or Eukanuba Large Breed Puppy.

The calcium and phosphorus levels are the key with large breed pups and regular puppy chow fits within acceptable levels. This is our fourth BMD. The others have been on Pro Plan and were a bit on the heavy side. I decided to go with the regular puppy chow this time as I've had good luck with regular Dog Chow for my adult Bernese after taking them off Pro Plan.

If this pup remains skinny, and any increase in foods lead to soft stools, then I'll make the switch to Pro Plan and see. My last pup was raised on Pro Plan Performance. But she was a Staffordshire Bull Terrier, full of muscle and energy but only 30 lbs as an adult.

More than likely, keeping this current pup on the skinny side is probably best in the long run. He's just very skinny for my liking. I would try and post a pic but he has a fluffy puppy coat. Very noticeable at bath time though.