Has anyone else had problems feeding a lab on large breed puppy food.  With ernie, we had allsorts of problems (runny poo, would not eat etc.) with Hill's.  He is now a fine adult on Naturediet.

This time around wth Ellie, we thought we had learnt.  We started on normal JWB puppy with a spoon of naturediet -things were ok.  However, when getting her second jabs at 12 weeks the vet suggested a large breed puppy food - this time Nutro.  We spent the following week mixing it in with her current food to ease the change over.

However, within 2 days, she started to poo in her crate at night - something she had not done in the previous 4 weeks.  We went through a week of this wondering what was wrong, getting up during the night etc. trying to avoid accidents, but to no avail After a week or so I changed the food back to JWB and a spoon of naturediet and she has been fine for the last 2 weeks.

Any ideas whether this is coincidence?  Also, will she be ok on normal puppy food rather than large breed?  She appears to be growing well and has a healthy constitution.

Hi - whats the breed? :)

a labrador bitch

i dont think id class a lab as a large breed????????? though i suppose it depends on her weight?
if shes doing better on the normal id stick to that

I must admit I never go in for these exotic foods. My Labradors start on a puppy food but change off of it as soon as I can, certainly by 6 months. I start converting at around 20 weeks by feeding a little adult with the puppy and am completely onto adult by six months. If your dog was doing OK then to change and take a setback is to do more harm than good.

There are so many different foods these days, puppy, junior, adult, geriatric, small bite, large breed et al! I think most of these are for the benefit of the owner rather than the dog. Years ago we had one type and our dogs lived just as long! In fact I'll go as far as to say that my first dog was also my longest lived. (He was a type who usually lived longer that Labradors though)

Regards, John