AATU 80/20 Chicken Dog Dry Food

Aatu would be an excellent diet for any young or adult dog to be on, although the manufacturer doesn't advise of a minimum age. If she is very active, you may need to feed slightly more than the feeding guideline suggests while she is still growing. A six month old puppy should certainly do very well if changed over on to this diet. Ideally, introduce her slowly, mixing a little of this food with her current diet, and increase the ratio of it over 1-2 weeks.

This food is marvellous for younger dogs and I feel much better than traditional, cereal-based diets. The only group of dogs which I think generally are less suited to this range of higher protein foods are the older dogs with potentially reduced kidney function. At 14 years old I think it is not clear from the evidence if a dog is better off getting more of its daily energy requirement from carbohydrate. Personally I think that if your dog is on a more traditional senior profile diet, such as Arden Grange, then I would be reluctant to change it if he/she is doing well already. These newer, high meat/zero cereal diets do show a lot of promise and I am pretty confident that they will prove to be much better for young and middle-aged dogs. However the "more natural" profile of these diets loses the argument for a 14 year old dog, which simply would never exist in the wild. elderly dogs might well have un-natural dietary requirements, so cereal based diets might be perfect for them. There is so much commercially motivated information out there, it is difficult to know the answers sometimes. My personal view is that the AATU diets are much better than traditional diets for dogs until they are getting into old age. At that point the situation is not clear. Therefore I might stick to Arden Grange for a 14 year old which seems to be doing well.

The AATU kibble is approximately 1cm.

Some forms of colitis would respond well to this food, others would not. There are a variety of causes for colitis and so it depends on that. If your dog is sensitive to cereal grains then this higher protein, zero cereal diet would certainly help. Other dogs respond better to a high fibre diet and this would probably be less good. It depends partly what types of food you have tried so far and what the results have been. This process can be trial and error to some extent. If you have not tried this sort of diet before, it is worth doing so, though your vet might be able to advise you on this subject. Generally speaking, I think this type of diet is much better suited to dogs than the traditional high cereal diets commonly fed in the past.