My puppy will be 8 weeks old in a day or so. I got him a week ago and he had previously been on Pedigree Puppy food. I started him on Fromm immediately after I got him. He had diarrhea for a couple days and was really gassy.

Now, his stools look firm but are actually quite mushy and he's still a bit gassy, but much less so than before. Is this normal? Or should I look into switching his food when his current food is almost empty? Specifically, I'm feeding him Fromm Gold Holistic Puppy Dry Food. I noticed that it isn't grain free, but says it doesn't contain wheat; it does have brown rice in it.

I was told that brown rice was much better than white rice so in theory it should be ok to have in his food. Is that true? I wanted to buy Dogswell Nutrisca kibble (here) instead because it was both grain and potato free, but the pet store worker recommended the Fromm. Does anyone think the Nutrisca would be a better option?

DogFoodAdvisor gives both of them 4 & 5 stars (depending on the particular product line within the brand) so they would both rate quite high.

Being gassy when changing food isn't too unusual, other have noticed it when they change foods. Going from Pedigree (a one star food) to either Fromm or Dogswell means that you're going from a lower quality food to a much higher quality and as a result may be overfeeding him - which often causes loose stools.

My one comment to the Dogswell (Chewy) link - my dogs are carnivores, while the first two items on the Dogswell bag are chicken and chicken meal - it quickly changes to legumes ... if I could, I'd personally want something with more meat than vegetable protein.

Thanks aljones. How do I tell if I'm overfeeding? I actually thought I was underfeeding him. He seems to be looking for food often. I feed him about 1 1/4 cup a day total.

Chey.....I do not believe you are over feeding 1 1/4 cups a day is quite low, at his age I would think closer to 2 cups per day would be better. I am a big believer in Fromm, except this particular puppy formula. It has 3 types of grains. No, brown rice is really not better than white, which may be the cause of the gas. The Dogswell, imo is better, from looking at the ingredients and %'s. The Fromm is a little low, imo, in fiber, and that may also be a source of the issue. Lastly, my husky when she was little could not eat duck, first ingredient in the Fromm, duck also caused loose stools for her as well. I hate to say it, because switching food frequently in poops cause, yep, loose stools, but I think in this case that is what I would do.

Suka had loose stools for the entire first month that I had him, and I finally connected it to his food. Even when I got him on something else, his stools firmed up a bit, but they were still loose. I tried pumpkin and kaopectate with mixed results. I finally bought a box of FortiFlora from Chewy and it cleared up his diarrhea immediately. I kept him on it for a few days before stopping it and his loose stools were completely gone. Since that time, he's gotten diarrhea twice (we found out he can't have cooked chicken, even though raw chicken is fine), and the FortiFlora took care of it immediately.

There are lots of home remedies you can try to get rid of the diarrhea, but if you can afford it, I honestly recommend the FortiFlora. It was amazing how well it worked, and it's just plain handy to have around for those unexpected bouts of diarrhea.