Maltese Yorkie - What type of food? (Nutrition)

Oh lordy - walk AWAY from the Beneful! I know it's beautiful packaging and marketing, but it's full of junk, sugars, colors, that kind of thing. I fell for it too, as a newbie dog owner.

Check out www.dogfoodproject.com - lots of sensible advice about picking a dog food.

 Some brands that are popular among our forum members - Blue Buffalo, Canidae, Natural Balance, Wellness, Solid Gold, Eagle Pack Holistic, and (surprisingly enough) the Costco brand dog foods... there are a bunch of others, but those are among the most popular.

The dogfoodproject website that Meg linked is a great resource.

My dog was a "picky eater" when I was feeding him foods like Science Diet and Purina, but when I switched to a higher quality food with more meat (and meat meal) and less corn, rice, etc., his appetite magically picked up and now he quite happily cleans out his bowl.

Welcome to the forums, and good luck with your new pup! Hope you stick around - there are a lot of very knowledgeable people around here, and I've learned a ton from all of them. They're a great resource on everything from dog food to health to training to finding a good breeder if you decide to get another puppy some day.

Most of the little dogs eat the way you are describing. My poodles pick at their food and it's one reason I feed them free choice (leaving food down all the time - till 6 at night) rather than trying to feed "meals". I think there are a lot of good reasons to feed meals at mealtime but my dogs just don't take to it well. Follow the suggestions for high quality food (nothing you'll find in the grocery store). Mine eat Canidae. If you feed free choice measure the food you put in the bowl in the AM and measure what's left at night. This will let you know how much she is usually eating. This can be important if she ever seems sick or seems like she's not eating, you'll know how much to actually expect her to eat. (It's probably a lot less than you'd expect too, these tiny dogs don't eat much.) They also often take a mouthful of food and move it from the bowl to somewhere else, drop it and then eat it slowly from that space. Who knows why but it's very common.

Make sure you aren't over feeding either.  Going with a higher quality food, means feeding less.  My pom who is ten pounds eats a little under 1/3 of a cup am and pm.  He used to pick at his food, but when I switched to a better quality food, he was happy to eat it all up right away.  Also I was using his food for training him, which meant hand feeding.  And if he didn't take the food from me when it was training time, the food went back into the bag and he missed that meal.  When dinner would come around he would be eager to eat and soon he was ready and willing at each meal time.

I don't understand why every single post has paragraph breaks in it and mine won't make paragraph breaks. It's a major reason why I hardly ever post here.