Life with your adult dog should be one of mutual enjoyment and companionship. A French Bulldog isn’t the sort of breed you’ll take along for a jog, but they love short walks on days when the temperature is moderate. Understanding your Frenchie’s tolerance for exercise and play should be the foundation of your relationship with your pet.
Adult Nutrition The same basic nutritional guidelines I discussed in Chapter 3 in regard to feeding puppies also apply to adult French Bulldogs. You always want a high-quality, premium food. I think it’s actually a good idea to select a puppy food that is part of a graduated feeding program within a single product line. Transition the dog away from the puppy food to the adult mixture, and in time, to the senior formula according to the instructions on the packaging.
This ensures a consistent level of nutrition throughout the dog’s life. If you follow this strategy and select wisely for your puppy, you’ve set his feeding program for life. Often the breeder from whom you purchase your Frenchie will recommend a food, or your vet may have suggestions.
Today’s treats are not just for making us guilty humans feel better because we’ve left our dog home alone for hours, or because it makes us happy to give our pets something they really like, today’s treats are designed to improve our dog’s health. Some of us humans treat our dogs just because, others use treats for training purposes, others for health, while still others treat for a combination of reasons. Whatever reason you choose to give treats to your French Bulldog, keep in mind that if we treat our dogs too often throughout the day, we may create a picky eater who will no longer want to eat their regular meals. As well, if the treats we are giving are high calorie, we may be putting our dog’s health in jeopardy by allowing them to become overweight.
Generally, the treats you feed should not make up more than approximately 10% of their daily food intake. Rawhide goes through an extensive processing with unhealthy chemicals, the result of which is that the rawhide is no longer food and, as such, no longer has to comply with food or health regulations. Ingested rawhide can swell to four times its size, causing mild to severe gastric blockages that require surgery. Pigs Ears are extremely high in fat and processed with unhealthy chemicals that can cause stomach upset, vomiting, and diarrhea. Hoof Treats include cow, horse, and pig hooves that are processed with preservatives, including insecticides, lead, bleach, arsenic-based products, and antibiotics to kill bacteria. If all the bacteria are not removed, your dog could also suffer from Salmonella poisoning.
These can also cause chipping or breaking of your dog’s teeth, as well as blockages in your dog’s intestines. Hard Treats:
There are so many choices of hard or crunchy treats available that come in many varieties of shapes, sizes, and flavors, that you may have a difficult time choosing. If your French Bulldog will eat them, hard treats will help to keep their teeth cleaner. Whatever you choose, read the labels and make sure that the ingredients are high quality and appropriately sized for your French Bulldog friend. Also … check any treats to see the country of origin.
I would be highly suspect of anything from China as there have been issues including deaths from “chicken breast jerky” from China. The large pet store chains in the U.S. have decided to stop carrying many of the Chinese treats. Soft Treats are also available in a wide variety of flavors, shapes, and sizes for all the different needs of our fur friends and are often used for training purposes as they have a stronger smell.
Often smaller dogs, such as the French Bulldog, prefer the soft, chewy treats over the hard, crunchy ones. Dental Treats or chews are designed with the specific purpose of helping your French Bulldog to maintain healthy teeth and gums.
They usually require intensive chewing and are often shaped with high ridges and bumps to exercise the jaw and massage gums while removing plaque build-up near the gum line. Freeze-dried and Jerky Treats offer a tasty morsel most dogs find irresistible, as they are usually made of simple, meaty ingredients, such as liver, poultry, and seafood. These treats are usually light weight and easy to carry around, which means they can also be great as training treats or to take with you when you and your dog go on a long walk.
Human Food Treats often contain additives and ingredients that are toxic or poisonous to our fur friends, so be very careful when sharing human food as treats for your French Bulldog. Choose simple, fresh foods with minimal or no processing, such as lean meat, poultry, or seafood.
Even today, far too many dog food choices continue to have far more to do with being convenient for us humans to serve than they do with being a well-balanced, healthy food choice for a canine. Sadly, because dogs will eat pretty much anything, we humans have been guilty of feeding pretty much anything to them for a very long time. In order to choose the right food for your French Bulldog, first it’s important to understand a little bit about canine physiology and what Mother Nature intended when she created our furry companions. Perhaps most important when choosing an appropriate diet for our dogs is taking a closer look at our dog’s teeth, jaws, and digestive tract.
While humans are omnivores who can derive energy from eating plants, our canine companions are carnivores, which means they derive their energy and nutrient requirements from eating a diet consisting mainly or exclusively of the flesh of animals, birds, or fish.
The Canine Teeth and Jaw:
The first part of your dog you will want to take a good look at when considering what to feed them will be their teeth. Unlike humans, who are equipped with wide, flat molars for grinding grains, vegetables, and other plant-based materials, canine teeth are all pointed because they are designed to rip, shred, and tear into meat and bone. Another obvious consideration when choosing an appropriate food source for our fur friends is the fact that every canine is born equipped with powerful jaws and neck muscles for the specific purpose of being able to pull down and tear apart their hunted prey. The structure of the jaw of every canine is such that it opens widely to hold large pieces of meat and bone, while the mechanics of a dog’s jaw permits only vertical (up and down) movement that is designed for crushing.
The Canine Digestive Tract:
A dog’s digestive tract is short and simple and designed to move their natural choice of food (hide, meat, and bone) quickly through their systems.
The canine digestive system is simply unable to properly break down vegetable matter, which is why whole vegetables look pretty much the same going into your dog as they do coming out the other end. Given the choice, most dogs would never choose to eat plants and grains, or vegetables and fruits over meat, however, we humans continue to feed them a kibble-based diet that contains high amounts of vegetables, fruits, and grains with low amounts of meat.
Part of this is because we’ve been taught that it’s a healthy, balanced diet for humans, and therefore, we believe that it must be the same for our dogs, and part of this is because all the fillers that make up our dog’s food are less expensive and easier to process than meat. How much healthier and long lived might our beloved French Bulldog be if, instead of largely ignoring nature’s design for our canine companions, we chose to feed them whole, unprocessed, species-appropriate food with the main ingredient being meat?
Whatever you decide to feed your dog, keep in mind that just as too much wheat, other grains, and other fillers in our human diet is having a detrimental effect on our health, the same can be very true for our best fur friends. Our dogs are also suffering from many of the same life-threatening diseases that are rampant in our human society as a direct result of consuming a diet high in genetically altered, impure, processed, and packaged foods.
What is the Best Food?
The dog food industry is very big business, and because there are now almost limitless choices, there is much confusion and endless debate when it comes to answering the question, “What is the best food for my dog?” Educating yourself by talking to experts and reading everything you can find on the subject, plus taking into consideration several relevant factors, will help to answer the dog food question. For instance, where you live may dictate what sorts of foods you have access to. Other factors to consider will include the particular requirements
of your dog, such as their age, energy, and activity levels. Next will be expense, time, and quality. While we all want to give our dogs the best food possible, many humans lead very busy lives and cannot, for instance, prepare their own dog food, but still want to feed a high quality diet that fits within their budget. The BARF Diet While some of us believe we are killing ourselves as well as our dogs with processed foods, others believe that there are dangers in feeding raw foods.
Raw feeding advocates believe that the ideal diet for their dog is one that would be very similar to what a dog living in the wild would have access to, and these canine guardians are often opposed to feeding their dog any sort of commercially manufactured pet foods. On the other hand, those opposed to feeding their dogs a raw or Biologically Appropriate Raw Food (BARF) diet believe that the risks associated with food-borne illnesses during the handling and feeding of raw meats outweigh the purported benefits. Interestingly, even though the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) states that they do not advocate a raw diet for dogs, they do advise that for those who wish to take this route, following basic hygiene guidelines for handling raw meat can minimize any associated risks.
Further, high-pressure pasteurization (HPP), which is high pressure, water-based technology for killing bacteria, is USDA approved for use on organic and natural food products and is being utilized by many commercial raw pet food manufacturers. Raw meats purchased at your local grocery store contain a much higher level of acceptable bacteria than raw food produced for dogs, because the meat purchased for human consumption is meant to be cooked, which will kill any bacteria that might be present.
This means that canine guardians feeding their dogs a raw food diet can be quite certain that commercially prepared raw foods sold in pet stores will be safer than raw meats purchased in grocery stores. Many guardians of high energy, working breed dogs will agree that their dogs thrive on a raw or BARF diet and strongly believe that the potential benefits of feeding a dog a raw food diet are many, including:
– Healthy, shiny coats
– Decreased shedding
– Fewer allergy problems
– Healthier skin
– Cleaner teeth
– Fresher breath
– Higher energy levels
– Improved digestion
– Smaller stools
– Strengthened immune system
– Increased mobility in arthritic pets
– General increase or improvement in overall health
All dogs, whether working breed or lap dogs are amazing athletes in their own right, therefore every dog deserves to be fed the best food available.
A raw diet is a direct evolution of what dogs ate before they became our domesticated pets and we turned toward commercially prepared, easy-to-serve dry dog food that required no special storage or preparation.
Raw feeding advocates believe that the ideal diet for their dog is one that would be very similar to what a dog living in the wild would have access to, and these canine guardians are often opposed to feeding their dog any sort of commercially manufactured pet foods. On the other hand, those opposed to feeding their dogs a raw or Biologically Appropriate Raw Food (BARF) diet believe that the risks associated with food-borne illnesses during the handling and feeding of raw meats outweigh the purported benefits. Interestingly, even though the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) states that they do not advocate a raw diet for dogs, they do advise that for those who wish to take this route, following basic hygiene guidelines for handling raw meat can minimize any associated risks.
Further, high-pressure pasteurization (HPP), which is high pressure, water-based technology for killing bacteria, is USDA approved for use on organic and natural food products and is being utilized by many commercial raw pet food manufacturers. Raw meats purchased at your local grocery store contain a much higher level of acceptable bacteria than raw food produced for dogs, because the meat purchased for human consumption is meant to be cooked, which will kill any bacteria that might be present. This means that canine guardians feeding their dogs a raw food diet can be quite certain that commercially prepared raw foods sold in pet stores will be safer than raw meats purchased in grocery stores. Many guardians of high energy, working breed dogs will agree that their dogs thrive on a raw or BARF diet and strongly believe that the potential benefits of feeding a dog a raw food diet are many, including:
– Healthy, shiny coats
– Decreased shedding
– Fewer allergy problems
– Healthier skin
– Cleaner teeth
– Fresher breath
– Higher energy levels
– Improved digestion
– Smaller stools
– Strengthened immune system
– Increased mobility in arthritic pets
– General increase or improvement in overall health
All dogs, whether working breed or lap dogs are amazing athletes in their own right, therefore every dog deserves to be fed the best food available.
A raw diet is a direct evolution of what dogs ate before they became our domesticated pets and we turned toward commercially prepared, easy-to-serve dry dog food that required no special storage or preparation.