Nutrition
At Big Hearts 4 Paws, nutrition is very important. Most of our dogs and puppies come to us malnourished. On top of providing excellent medical care, we prioritize excellent nutrition as well. We have done our research and continue to research the best options for our moms and babies! It is important to us that we start healing our dogs from the inside out, and that starts with a quality food.
The food we have chosen to feed is NutriSource. Our puppies and pregnant/nursing moms eat NutriSource Small/Medium Breed kibble and our adults eat Fromm Adult Gold. This kibble has ingredients we can read and no mystery meats; the first ingredient is chicken.
We also feed NutriSource canned food. We use the chicken and rice recipe in both the adult and puppy formulas. NutriSource does have a parent company; however they also only make dog food! Tuffy’s Pet Foods is the parent company but they are family owned as well.
Ingredients to avoid:
– meat meal (mystery meat)
– MSG
– corn syrup, vegetable oils
– corn, white flour, soy
– nitrites/nitrates
– BHA/BHT
– artificial coloring
We buy our food from Jake’s Pet Supply. They are a fantastic family owned pet supply store. If you choose to feed something different, we highly recommend going to Jake’s and asking them for help. They are knowledgeable about the products they carry and always willing to lend a hand!
Let’s talk about one more important topic: flea, tick, and heartworm preventatives. We always recommend a chewable flea/tick preventative (we use Simparica). Topicals are “old school” and not very good for their skin. Not to mention they can rub off and not help at all or get onto surfaces and irritate other animals/children. We also do not recommend flea collars either.
Heartworm preventatives are an absolute MUST for any dog (we use Heartgard Plus). No exceptions. Heartworms are spread by mosquitos and all it takes is one bite. It does not matter if your dog is an inside dog or you don’t take them anywhere; they all go out to use the bathroom and are susceptible to being bitten by a mosquito. This completely preventable disease is very expensive to treat and extremely hard on the poor dog! At least 80% of the mom dogs we get are heartworm positive and we hate seeing them go through the harsh treatment for something that could be prevented with a tasty monthly chewable.
