Can My Dog Eat Yogurt

Feeding Dogs Yogurt

Sure. You can even share some of the red raspberries you see in the photo too.

But there are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind!

Use Plain Full Fat, Whole Milk Yogurt and you must watch out for sugar content. Our goal is to keep sugar and overall carbohydrates low.

Is Yogurt an effective probiotic?

If you are considering that a daily dollop of yogurt will give you a good probiotic for your dog, you are likely to be left with some gaps. High quality probiotics are evaluated in large part based on the number of strains of bacteria, and how many billions of cultures can be found in the probiotic.

We also have to consider a pre-biotic which is the food source for the probiotic.

Your typical yogurt is better than no probiotic at all. But it will not be your optimal source.

Plain OR Greek Yogurt will offer 1-5 Billion Live Probiotics. Your dog’s gut has about 13 Trillion organisms. So if the gut is unhealthy and out of balance — a low CFU count will not help you much at all.

We can also use Kefir. Kefir is going to offer you about 3 times! 12 strains and 15 -20 Billion live CFUs. So it may be a better choice to add a few times a week. I often recommend we use Kefir.

But don’t forget fermented veggies either.

Rotate brands of probiotics to keep introducing new strains and cultures to our dog’s gut health.

If we need to supplement probiotics that’s an option too! We can look at Probiotics like MegaSpore or Fidospore for healing, and we can consider Adored Beast for maintenance.

Remember — if your dog have been on an antibiotic in the last 18 months — a good probiotic is in order to bring balance back to gut health. It’s a good idea for all dogs!

Is Yogurt effective for calcium supplementation?

Most of you are not thinking about calcium supplementation in your homemade recipes or when you add in extra amount of protein to top your dog’s bowl. Most of you on kibble don’t really have to do so because kibble is required to be balanced with the right phos:calcium ratios. So, unless you are consistently and repetitively adding meat to your dog’s bowl, you don’t have to think about it.

But, if you’re starting to do a home-prepared diet, a partial raw diet, or a homemade raw diet — Calcium is absolutely critical to think about.

And unfortunately, a dollop of yogurt is NOT going to be a sufficient source of calcium on it’s own. There are options that include Raw Meaty Bones (RMB) to go along with the meat source, eggshell powder, or supplementation like Calcium Nitrate (Now Brand) — but you’ll definitely need more than yogurt.

The best gift you can give you dog is better nutrition