Hey,

Happy Wednesday!

My wife comes from a big family — and I mean vast. One of the many advantages of this is the plentiful array of characters and stories it provides. 

One of my favorite stories is how her cousin Michael only ate cornflakes with milk until he was 16. I thought this tale might be somewhat apocryphal but I confirmed it with the man himself. 

“I did try other foods around that time but with little success,” he told me.

Now, while he not only survived but also turned out to be a strapping fellow — a triathlete and competitive karate practitioner — no one can argue Michael’s diet was a good one. Whatever nutrients are missing from cornflakes and milk were missing from his body.

You might think I’m about to mention our list of Best Dog Foods for Picky Eaters — it’s a fine list and useful if your dog is like the young Michael — but what I want to talk about is diet rotation.

The clue is in the name — it’s a feeding method where you give your dog a variety of foods using a planned schedule.

The aim isn’t to turn your dog into some kind of foodie who photographs each dish for his Instagram page. The logic behind diet rotation is there’s no perfect dog food. 

Any dog food can be flawed. It might not have enough of one nutrient or too much of another. It could even contain toxins. 

These flaws might be small and therefore do little harm over the course of a few meals or even months or years — but if a dog is fed the same food day after day for most of their life, it could shorten that life.

Thankfully, Michael now rotates his diet and eats most foods — the spicier the better, he says. (Needless to say, your dog shouldn’t be getting anything spicy — let’s not take rotation that far.)

You can read more about diet rotation here. And you can find plenty of feeding options for your dog on our Best Dog Food pages.

That’s all for today. It’s a nice day here so I might literally rotate my diet — over a BBQ.

Until next time,