Feeding a Mastiff

Stella is huge! At eight weeks she was twenty pounds. At seven months, she is now eighty pounds! (And she is actually the smallest one in the littler right now, which is pretty crazy!) Feeding a growing machine like a south african mastiff is kind of daunting. At first we fed her Costco brand puppy food. People in the store laughed at me and asked if I was feeding a horse when I stocked up with three bags of puppy food. But Stella was so unenthusiastic about feeding time. We tried to get her on a schedule, but she could care less about her food and would just graze now and then. We also worried because it was not a specified large breed puppy food. We didn't want her to grow to fast and have problems with her bones, joints, etc.

 After doing a lot of research, we finally decided to switch her to Innova Large Breed Puppy food. It's expensive, but she loves it and it gives us peace of mind knowing that she is getting food that is good for her and designed for large breeds. Large breeds need to have food that is lower in their percent of protein and fat so that they can grow more steadily and fully develop. This one had the lowest level of protein we could find (24 percent- recommended for large breeds -around 25% or under). Now she loves her food and, despite what we thought when she was eating Costco food- she is extremely food motivated and loves to eat. This is very helpful to know when training her. She just wanted the good stuff. 

To make eating a more interactive time, we also sometimes use the food toys for her. We have one that is like a pipe with a whole in it so she has to roll it to get the food out. Then we have one that is like an egg, and she has to tip it over for food to fall out. We plan to also get the tug a jug, which she has to repeatedly pull a rope out of a little jug to pull food out of. Now instead of her eating her meal in thirty seconds, it can take her up to a half hour, which gives us time to eat or gets her out of our way if we are doing something. 

We spend a lot of time thinking about Stella's health and we want our baby girl to be perfect as she can be. For training, we use Natural Balance Turkey formula logs. This is actually a food for dogs and it is very healthy for them, but we chop it up into little squares and feed it to her as treats and rewards during training. She will do anything for these tasty (and nutritious) treats.

While I'm talking about healthy food, I would love to recommend Antlers for your dog. This is an alternative to rawhides that dogs can chew on. They get bone marrow from the antlers, and it also gives off calcium, and they come in different sizes- the first time I got her a jumbo, but obvious enough, she needed the Mastiff size. Mastiffs are HUGE chewers, and the antlers that we buy her keep her occupied for a long time. They again are healthy for her, and she is not going to choke on them like one might on rawhides. It is time consuming for her while we watch tv or do stuff around the house, and it gets out all her urges to chew, so she never ruins our shoes, phones, clothes, etc. 

Even though Stella is the smallest out of her brothers and sisters right now, we feel that by controlling her growth and feeding her high quality food and treats, she is going to steadily grow to her potential and be much healthier in the long run. The guy we got her from at first told Chad that our dog must be severely underweight and unhealthy if she was only 80 pounds right now. So we went to see them, and after he saw how toned and powerful she looks, he said she will probably outlive all her litter-mates! (and she was also much better behaved and socialized than the three other litter-mates we got to see that day) BRAGGING RIGHTS!