Hard being a mum

Since we got Olive only a week ago, we have realised how hard it is to know if you are doing the right thing or not. We have both been losing sleep over the smallest things and we just keep feeling that we are going wrong with our pup.

When we got her, we were told to give her a small handful of food 3 times a day. We did that and the little thing just seemed to wolf it down and then sit there looking at us expecting more. Believing that all dogs just eat til there's no food left in the world, we continued as we had been for the next day.

Then we bought some puppy food and read the instructions on the back only to discover that we had been underfeeding her loads.

Rather than giving her loads of food the next meal time, we decided to give it to her gradually to expand her tiny tum more gently.
Well, even watching her eat for the first time, we saw her tummy start swelling and as soon as she finished eating, she was literally waddling round the floor looking like a bloated goldfish.

Guilt struck again.

Since then she is on nearly a normal amount of food for the breed that she is and wolfs it all down happily. But her poo just wasn't solid at all. We did all kinds of research and noted that the food we were giving her, which we thought was one of the best, can often not be very good at all. It was too late to drive to the pet shop so we went to bed last night with another guilty feeling.

First thing this morning we got up and drove to the pet shop. We recognised a lot of the brands that had been mentioned on forums and opted for a nice-looking one. Couldn't wait to show Olive.

She absolutely bolted that bowl of food down like she hadn't been fed in years! And we sighed a huge sigh of relief that we had finally done something right.

Now it seems her poo is even worse than before. Not sure if it is just because it is a change in diet - even though we did a lot of research and have only integrated the new food into her diet very very slowly - or if she is also intolerant to this food.

How do you know?

Al and I have both had dogs in the family whilst growing up neither of remember putting this much effort into bringing them up. With no internet of course, you didn't have the luxury of just going on a forum and asking all the dog-lovers if your dog's poo was normal.
Neither Duke nor Fred had any training, neither of them had a crate, neither of them were taken out in the middle of the night to do their business and they both turned out to be fantastic, loveable, reliable family pets.

I wonder if we're going wrong because we are worrying too much and trying too hard to make the perfect pooch.

I wish little animals could just let you know.