When you feed your dog, you’re not only nourishing their mind, body, and spirit – but also nourishing the friendly bacteria in their gut microbiome. With the right prebiotic-rich foods coming their way, these bacteria help your dog’s body properly digest food, absorb nutrients, and create energy.
Even with prebiotic support, the friendly bacteria die off all the time, however, leaving room for the bad guys to move in fast. Fortunately, you can prevent that from happening by bolstering their ranks with probiotics. As the probiotic foods bring in beneficial bacteria, the gut microbiome stays balanced, resulting in a healthier, happier pup.
Although it might sound complicated, all it takes is feeding your dog the right foods each day. Ready to get started? Here’s what you need to know.
Probiotics vs Prebiotics
A healthy gut microbiome benefits from getting both probiotics and prebiotics on a regular basis. To make it easy, deliver prebiotics through high-quality dog food and then add probiotic-rich foods as a topper.
Probiotics are foods that effectively deliver live, healthy bacteria to the gut. Ingesting the good bacteria helps keep the microbiome in balance, so the bad bacteria cannot take over.
Prebiotics are the insoluble fiber that ferments and turns into a steady food source for beneficial bacteria. The fermentation process also creates short-chain fatty acids, which help decrease the growth of harmful bacteria in the digestive tract.
Benefits of Giving Your Dog Probiotics
Since probiotics regularly replenish the gut with beneficial bacteria, they offer your dog many excellent health benefits, including:
- Boost in digestion to help prevent an upset stomach
- Offset the bacterial die-off that occurs with antibiotics
- Healthier teeth and gums plus a lower risk of bad breath
- Decrease in skin allergy symptoms, including itching
- A softer, healthier coat that looks fantastic always
- Better overall function of their immune system
When your dog’s feeling healthier, it’ll show in their behavior, too. You might notice that they have more energy and stay in a good mood all throughout the day.
Top Sources of Probiotics for Dogs
While you can definitely give your dog probiotic supplements, natural foods do the job much better. The probiotics in supplements often get trapped in stomach acid, resulting in immense losses before the bacteria can enter the digestive system.
With natural foods, the beneficial bacteria stay in a live, healthy state throughout the journey. In addition, your dog gets to enjoy a nutrient bump from all the vitamins and minerals in each food item.
The most popular natural probiotic foods for dogs include:
- Yogurt
- Kefir
- Goat’s milk
- Apples
- Asparagus
- Bananas
- Sweet Potato
- Sauerkraut
- Carrots
- Broccoli
If your dog doesn’t prefer to eat any of the probiotic foods you try, just sprinkle ocean kelp over their kibble. Flaxseeds, chia seeds, and chicory root can work as well.
How Often to Give Your Dog Probiotic Foods
Plan to give your dog probiotic foods daily to keep the beneficial bacteria at healthy levels. Depending on your dog’s preferences, feed the probiotics to them as a snack or put it right over their dog food.
Start with a small bite at first to see how well your dog tolerates the new foods. Then, increase the amount you give up to the proper serving for their size.
Small dogs should only get one teaspoon of yogurt per day, for example, while large breeds can have a tablespoon instead. Remember to only use plain, unsweetened yogurt without any xylitol or other artificial sweeteners.
You can be a little bit more generous with the veggies. Ideally, you’ll want to give small dogs a tablespoon or two of sauerkraut, broccoli, or bananas. Large dogs can have up to a ¼ cup just as long as they’re still eating their regular food and not gaining weight.
Unless your dog is super picky, feed probiotic-rich veggies more often than fruit to avoid giving your dog too much sugar. Fruit can serve as a delicious treat though, so maybe keep it to once a week.
Add Prebiotics to Fully Support Your Dog’s Gut Health
Probiotics work best when your dog gets enough prebiotics to feed all the healthy bacteria. So, to fully support your dog’s gut health, you just need to select a high-quality dog food filled with prebiotics, like Jiminy’s Cravin’ Cricket and Good Grub.
Insect protein offers all the prebiotics your dog needs thanks to its chitin fibers. As an insoluble fiber, this substance serves as a microbial food source for all the beneficial bacteria delivered by the probiotics.
You can then rest assured that your dog’s gut microbiome has the support needed to stay functional and healthy through the years. And your dog gets to enjoy the tastiest food around while getting a little bit of an extra treat every day.
To create the perfect formula every time, we follow that up with whole food ingredients that offer natural probiotics in every bite. Together, the naturally prebiotic insect protein and probiotic-rich foods help build a strong gut microbiome. Our innovative protein doesn’t trigger allergies like traditional pet food ingredients either, resulting in better gut health for food-sensitive dogs.
Beyond that, our products are eco-friendly, humane, and safe for dogs of all sizes. So, you can definitely feel good about feeding your dog Jiminy’s – and your dog will enjoy our tasty Cravin’ Cricket and Good Grub flavors.