Once a puppy is weaned from its Mommy, or the bottle, it can start learning how handle or digest various types of food. The growing puppy will continue to deal with the different types of foods it will be eating. The first eight to ten months of this time the puppy will be growing substantially, and burning energy at a high rate. One of the reasons a puppy’s growth is stunted is due to food that is poor in nutrients, or nutrients that are difficult for the puppy to digest, which doesn't give him the nutrients or energy to keep up with his rapid growth.A growing puppy that gets too many ingredients, which he hasn't learned to digest yet, can cause the puppy to develop a problem called diarrhea. If a puppy is fed adult dog food, it can get diarrhea due to the huge amount of indigestible materials, this irritates the puppy’s intestine and causes the puppy to get diarrhea.
Formulating a diet worthy of a puppy, is probably the most important thing you can do in positioning a dog's life. All the nourishment a growing puppy gets comes directly from his owner. You are in control of his health and growth; this will be a direct reflection of how the owner of the puppy is doing his job.
A puppy that is in the growing stage needs at least twice the energy and nutrients as an adult dog. Although, feeding him twice the amount of food is not how it works, you need to provide him with food that has nutrients that are formulated for a puppy and his digestive system. However, as the puppy continues to grow older, the food can contain ingredients that are more difficult to digest.
Once the puppy reaches maturity, he should be able to handle all of the food that you feed him. This is because, as he grew so did his digestive system, and now it can handle foods that it couldn’t when it was a puppy.
Again, a growing puppy really depends on the owner to give him what his body needs as he is growing up. If he is neglected, or just not fed what his body needs, it will reflect on his health and growth.
