Yogurt

I've heard many people here on Chaz talking about feeding their dogs yogurt. What kind do you feed them (flavored or plain), how much and how often?

Thanks!

plain, as natural as possible without added color, sugar, flavoring ect, with live bacterial cultures (yum ) I used to give a tablespoon with every meal, but I had a very tiny Shih Tzu and she had specail circumstances.
Mordy is our dog food expert

I have to admit that mine eat all kinds, all flavors (I only buy the ones with active cultures), but I have dogs who love fruit. I guess you could say I have a fruity bunch

I feed the whole milk plain one. They have a healthy weight so no need to feed the 0% fat one for me. They usually get a spoon a day each, except this morning because I tilted the container just to add some of the liquid to their food and the whole container fell in Boris' bowl I removed 2/3 of it but he still had lots of yoghurt this morning, lol.

How funny, I bet boris thought he had died and gone to heaven. lol I buy the plain live culture for the dogs. Brutus get 3 tablespoons per day. Roxie and Maggie get 3 teaspoons. Mine have it with fruit if I run out of the plain. Their favorite seems to be strawberry.

My dogs would love the fruit kind....they love people food!! I'll try the plain at first and see how that goes. I fed Chloe cottage cheese when she was pregnant and nursing her puppies....she LOVED that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gander gets a big dollop of organic goat milk in the evening (just cause I bought it for me and didn't like it). Usually I just by plain, full-fat, live-culture, preferably organic for both of us.

He also gets the whey that I drain from mine - he loves it!

Mine all get a tablespoon in the morning meal only on their raw food. The only ones who do not get it are pergnant females because the vet said it was unwise to give stuff high in calcium to them. Right now there are no pregnant females so everyone gets it. There is no one in the rescue either, so just my three dogs plus four boarders who are on lone to us for a year.

I've got a question. If a dog is not used to getting dairy products, (straight up that is), won't it cause some upset becaue they would lack the ability to properly digest the main protien, casein, anymore?

I usually feed the plain, with live cultures....but sometimes the vanilla, cause even a dog should just have a treat now and then..and mine LOVE vanilla! I put a Tbsp. each meal. but, when it is hot outside I freeze a little with mashed banana in small dixie cups......now there's a treat that keeps them happy for awhile. (ahhhhh....memories of summer....)

I don't know about the casein. I've never had a dog that didn't get some amount of dairy and never had one that seems to have a problem with it.

Especially with yogurt, the live cultures seems to provide more benefits and digestibility than might be expected with "regular" dairy.

yogurt is a fermented milk product and generally tolerated very well by all dogs.

the kind made from whole milk is nutritionally the most valuable, but fat free or low fat is fine too.

the issue about digestion isn't about casein, but about lactose, which is a problem where dogs (or people) who are lactose intolerant ingest large amounts. during fermentation by bacteria, much of the lactose in yogurt is converted already tho.

the live cultures are excellent for supporting the digestive tract and immune system. more info here:
http://www.mordanna.com/dogfood/index.php?page=probiotics

plain yogurt is generally recommended since sweeteners/sugars are something dogs definitely don't need in their diet. it's not so much about issues with flavorings etc., just a common sense thing.