u/Tosti-Floof

I finally got my puppy home yesterday, and her breeder fed her a mix of a specific kibble and mush vaisto ice blue. When I got her home, I switched to mush vaisto light purple because of availability close to me (and because you guys said it would be eaiser to feed premade raw compared to homemade when I asked about feeding requirements for puppies a few weeks ago). There's no signs that she struggled with the change. I'll do about 70/30 raw/kibble until the kibble bag is empty, but I'm wondering if I should stick to that specific raw brand and type throughout puppyhood, or if it would be alright to change between brands as long as they're balanced for puppies?

The kibble industry is very much "no variation, change is bad," which is obviously not right, but how much variation is good, and can there be too much? To me, it seems that varying brands and proteins will make the puppy's gut more robust and healthier, but how often should I rotate proteins and/or brands? She's a standard poodle, so she's got a fair bit of growing left.

I'm also curious what the difference between raw for active/working dogs and puppies is, as I've seen some brands have premade marked for both puppies and active adult dogs. It would obviously depend on the brand, but since she'll probably be growing until she's past one year old, and most places recommend sticking to puppy food until then, would it be possible to add active adult dog food into the rotation when she's getting close to the one year mark?

(I'll post a photo of her in the comments because I might be biased, but she's an unfairly cute puppy)

I mostly know poodles, and I'm not a breeder, so this is just out of curiosity, but essentially, where is the line drawn between breeding for colours vs. preserving specific colours in a breed?

FCI recently opened up for more colours to be accepted for poodles, like parti, phantom, and brindle. Sable did not become an accepted colour, but it can appear even when pairing two dogs that are within standard colourwise. Now, I only know how people in my country do it, but most breeders here only breed a few specific colours. The breeder I'll be buying from only breeds brown, the breeder my family got their poodle from only bred silver, our first poodle came from a breeder that only bred black. The national poodle club has guidelines on which colour genes are more and less recommended to pair. Pairing brown and silver is considered a bad idea since it might dilute the brown. When I see the conversations here, in the poodle subs, and in other dog subs, it seems like that's not a normal practice and a lot of the times it seems like people have no idea what colour their poodle puppy is or has genes for. The way it's done here makes it easier for buyers to get a colour that they want, and it makes it easier for breeders to preserve the quality of the different colours, but it also becomes problematic if breeders only look for colour when making pairings and if specific colours get illnesses or stray too far from the standard since they're only being paired with others of the same colour/carriers of some specific colours.

There's obviously way more than just colour that makes breeders pick specific pairings, like health, titles, and COI. But I'm still curious where people would draw the line between preserving colours and breeding specifically for colours.

I'm bringing home a puppy soon, and since a raw diet has more benefits than kibble (the Helsinki University did some good studies), I'd like to start the puppy on raw. However, feeding a puppy seems way more advanced than feeding an adult dog so I thought I'd try to food prep before the puppy came home to avoid having to stress about the meals the first few weeks at least. Has anyone got any advice on how to make raw safe and balanced for a puppy? I'm considering buying premade raw, but I live pretty far away from the closest pet shop, and I'm not sure they sell any premade raw for puppies. What differences is there between raw for adult dogs and raw for puppies?