NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Jon Austin, DVM with Hutchinson Small Animal Hospital recommends that pet owners discuss with their veterinarian what the best food is for their pet.
"I always tell people, your pet food needs to correspond with the stage of life that your pet is in," Austin said. "Puppies need puppy food. Big breed dogs that are growing fast and their bones are getting long quickly. They need what's called large breed puppy food. The nutrition market has kind of gone from just dog food to more stage of life foods. You see puppy foods specific for large breed dogs or puppy foods for toys, toy breed dogs. Then you have adult foods or what they kind of call maintenance foods from about a year and a half to seven. Then you see senior diets or things like that."
Some companies have special formulas to help with certain conditions.
"Those are typically tailored for specific diseases and issues like kidney disease, heart disease, liver disease. We have special diets for those issues, and those are prescription diets. That's part of the treatment plan that your veterinarian will recommend when you go see them for your pet. If we do blood work and we find heart issues or kidney issues, liver issues, we can help treat them with special prescription diets. But the most important thing is, across the board is that everybody has a diet and feeds a diet that's appropriate for the stage of life that your pet is in."
It's important to maintain a relationship with your veterinarian so that they can catch some of these conditions on yearly appointments, because they already know you and your pet.
"In our case, it's typically a one time in and out visit. We draw the blood sample at that point, run those tests that are necessary and then call and communicate with the owners afterwards. That's, again, part of that relationship that we talk about with your veterinarian. I don't do those blood tests on everybody every year. We kind of wait till the pets are getting a little more farther along in their life, maybe seven or eight when we start recommending doing that annually."
It's also important that your pet be fed an appropriate amount for their size, so that they can keep their weight in a safe and healthy range long-term.