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Feeding Your Puppy
from: The Complete DogA puppy will alway give clues to his owner whether he's getting too much or too little food in a number of ways. Crying is the most obvious, but least likely always be accurate. Although hungry puppies do cry, so do cold puppies, hot puppies, puppies disturbed from a nap, lost puppies, sad puppies, and so on. Crying is simply nature's way of giving a puppy a way to tell everybody he's unhappy. Anything that makes a puppy unhappy will probably also make him cry, even having his tummy too full.
Therefore, to say that a puppy is crying because he's hungry requires judgment by the owner. However, since we don't think like a puppy, we have to use the reactions of the puppy's system to determine whether or not he's getting enough to eat.
Whenever you feed a puppy, two things should happen. First, he should have a bowel movement and second, he should urinate. Sometimes a puppy may need a little encouragement by rubbing his anal area, but he should always perform both acts if everything is going right. The makeup and amount of his feces and urine are important clues that tell you how well you're doing when it comes to properly feeding your pet.
For one thing, the puppy's stool should be formed as it's expelled, but its consistency should be soft and pasty. The color will depend to some extent on what you're feeding him. But in every case, it shouldn't vary from a pale tan to a mahogany brown. The inside of the stool may be yellow-brown in many cases. Stools that are green, bluish-white or clear signal trouble. Even tan or brownish stools that are watery, lumpy, hard or curdled may indicate something isn't right. Whenever either off-color or off-form stools occur, stop feeding immediately and skip the next feeding entirely.
Begin the following feeding with a formula that's been diluted one-half with boiled water. Continue to feed the same quantity as you did the undiluted food. If this fails to produce an improvement in the stool, reduce the quantity you're feeding by 25 % at each feeding. If stools continue to be off-color or off-form, consult your vet.
A puppy's urination is an indicator of his water balance. The quantity should be about the same each time the puppy urinates. It might be pale yellow to almost clear, but should never be deep yellow or orange. Also, it should always be like water and never like syrup and should smell like urine. Urine that is scanty, dark in color, or syrupy, indicates that the pup isn't getting enough water.
More water should be supplied, either added to the formula or fed separately. If the urine seems excessive in amount, unduly clear, or thin, the water concentration of the formula should be re-checked to make sure he's not getting too much water. If urine production stops altogether for longer than four feedings, take the puppy to a vet as soon as possible.
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