I am having problems with my year old Golden Retreiver. I have only recently changed his food as he was a picky eater.
He has become very hyper and will not do anything he is told.
Is this just a coincidence or could the problem be the food. Any help out there?

It could well be the food - some diets have more additives or a higher protein level. For example, my dog on 26% protein was completely over the top hyper, on 22% he is more like normal lively! I would read the ingredients and perhaps compare them with another food. The other thing is, you say he is a year old - do you mean just turned 12 months? If so, and he hasn't been castrated, he is going to be hormonal. My vet confirmed that teenage dogs anywhere between the age of 10 months up to at least 18 months have three times the amount of testosterone as that of an adult male dog. Obviously this will affect behaviour, which may be why he is not listening to you - just be patient, he will settle down again! My dog is 12 months and is going through this stage - if we have any visitors he gets so excited that whatever I say to him, I may as well be invisible!
Hilda

Do you mean the food that looks like plastic mince? I use this as tit bits only. If you look on the list of ingredients you will see that sugar is one of the largest ingredients???? Now too much sugar can sure hype us up, and I would think it would be terrible for his teeth.

I use the tiny mince pieces so as to limit the size and quantity of treats.

Hi,

I am not surprised, that food is full of articifial additives, colourants and preservatives!!!!!!!!

I would suggest either feeding a high quality dry food, which is made from natural ingredients only, ie. Nutro, James Wellbeloved, Burns.

OR

Try Naturediet, which is a wet food, but made with human grade meat, with rice and vegetables. I have only ever met one dog who didn't like this and it was a little Yorkie which had been fed human food such as chicken, beef and of all things cakes!!!

Look out for anything that says meat and animal derivatives, artificial colourants and preservatives. It's not always the amount of protein, it's the quality of the protein that causes the problem.

We feed are beardies on the BARF diet (bones and raw food) because hey get very hyped on processed food and although they were excellant on the naturediet, we thought raw food was more natural.

manda
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