Question: Define Large Breed

Last week over on my Dog Food Dish blog, I wrote about the unique needs of large-breed puppies when it comes to feeding and puppy food formulas. The veterinary nutritionist I interviewed said that he considers any dog 55 pound or more (as an adult) a large-breed dog. That knocked my socks off.

Talos, a Great Dane puppy being trained to work as a service dog by Laurie Luck from Smart Dog University (a great blog, by the way)

I’d always figured that when people talked about large-breed puppies they meant REALLY large breeds … I guess, what many people call “giant breeds.”

For me, a 50-60-70 pound dog isn’t really that big. It’s all relative, I know.

In our valley, and even at our advanced pet dog training classes, most of the dogs are about that big. I’ve said before … Lilly, at around 35-38 pounds, is usually one of the smallest dogs at class.

The expert suggested that even dogs 55 pounds and up (when full grown) would benefit from a large-breed puppy food formula, which has fewer calories per cup than regular puppy food.

That means all our Labs and Goldens. Think about that.

Fewer calories help moderate a pup’s growth, which can help prevent a whole bunch of orthopedic problems.

This struck me hard since Ginko blew out both of his knees at age 3. We didn’t know exactly how big he would be since we really didn’t know what breed mix he was, but he ate regular puppy food.

I know that there were likely many reasons for his injury, but the idea made me rethink any future pup’s nutrition around here.

You’ll see in the comments from that blog post that one Twitter follower balked at the idea, but I’ll add here that her concerns were:

  • That large-breed food doesn’t have enough protein for regular pups (The norm is 24-28% protein in puppy food.)
  • That the cost was outrageous

I looked into both those things and found :

  • At least for the brand for which my expert works (Wellness), the regular puppy food has 28% protein, and the large-breed formula has 26% protein.
  • The cost for a 15-pound bag was just $2 more for the large-breed version.

My internal argument says it cannot hurt to be cautious with the calories for dogs that might get big-ish. What do you think?