Browsing: Diet and Nutrition

What you feed a Bernese Mountain Dog matters most while it is growing and again once it is carrying joint disease, and it matters differently at each end.

This section covers large-breed puppy nutrition and why controlled growth beats fast growth, how to read a nutritional adequacy statement rather than the marketing on the front of the bag, body condition and healthy weight for a dog this size, and a frank look at home-prepared diets – including the UC Davis finding that 95% of published homemade recipes were deficient in at least one essential nutrient.

Weight is not a cosmetic issue in this breed. There is good published evidence that lifelong lean feeding delays the onset of hip osteoarthritis by years. It is the cheapest health intervention available to a Berner owner.