Dry dog food, recomendations please..

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Ok so i know this had probably been done to death!

However my two vizslas have been fed on pedigree tins, and some mixer biscuits to bulk it up a bit. However after calling at a new local pet store, i was told how bad pedigree food is, and its full of salt and sugar.. in fact the woman told me it was like feeding my children fruit pastels!
So i have now decided to look into dried food. I bought them some Burns to try (ones a fussy eater) and have been fixing it with a little pedigree tinned currently. Now they are both eating it, but don't seem to chew it. There are wolfing it down then it all bulks up, they pause, and then carry on eating.

Is this just because its dry food, or they are rushing it or what? Sorry if this all sounds dense, but it doesn't look pleasant for them. Been looking into other food make, as the Burns only had 20% chicken, so doesn't sound ideal.

Any help/advice would be much appreciated, as if not im wonder round the pet shop reading bags!!

Thankies!
 
I buy wainwrights food from pets at home. I buy the trays of meat (I go for lamb and turkey) and get the big sacks of biscuits. 15kg of biscuits costs £36.99 and 12 meat trays costs £8.99. The meat is excellent quality, and I think the biscuits are ok, just not as good as some of the more expensive ones like skinners.

Mine looks very shiny and healthy on it, and wolfs it down, so much so that I was mean and bought him a bowl to slow down his eating :D
 
Thanks, will look at that when i go in the shop later! How much meat do you feed?
I wondered is theres was such a thing as dried but 'soft' dog food?
 
Our spaniel was on Burns however I recently changed her to fish4dogs, she wasn't enjoying the Burns and would pick at it as the day went on. With the fish4dogs she has half of what she would have had on Burns and she eats every meal within seconds, not hours! So thumbs up and even though it's expensive, it should work out cheaper in the long run if she's only eating half the amount compared to Burns (and it's on offer at the moment on the website 25% off the working dog food ;) )
 
I'd recommend Skinners Field & Trial, about £20 for 15kgs and excellent quality, mine also get the Wainwrights trays (about 1/2 a tray between them a day) as Stencil said £8.99 for 12 trays, so for £28.99 i can feed both dogs a decent diet for about a month...
 
I used to feed Arden Grange which is fairly decent, mid range. There are better options out there now though...

top quality dry foods - Orijen, Fish4dogs, Acana, Applaws...

I now feed Natural Instinct raw and I keep a bag of Applaws for if we go away anywhere and they need dry food.:)
 
Will have a look at Skinners. Just looked at fish4dogs, ouch at the normal price!! However if you can feed less it wont be so bad.
Do you think once they get used to dry food more, they will start to chew it rather than gulp it down!?
 
fish4dogs might be quite good if they gulp it down, the kibble is quite big compared to other brands? We used to feed the spaniel a mug of Burns twice a day, and now feed 1/2 mug twice a day and she still looks 100 times better on the fish4dogs.
 
Mine gets a whole tray of meat a day as well as about 2 plastic feed cups of dry, with a few extras in kongs etc - he's a big dog though, not obese! :D
 
I've had dalmatians for many years, they are very similar in shape to vizlas and so I'm guessing vizlas will be subject to the same problems. I would never give dried food to a dog of this kind (small stomach, large appetite) without soaking it first otherwise it swells in the stomach and can cause major problems. Just watch the dried food swell on contact with water.

I've always fed tinned chappie - it says on the tin it's recommended by vets and it really is - by the ones that don't make a fortune out of pushing expensive dried foods :rolleyes: It's also much cheaper than any of these. My last dali lived to 13 1/2 and my current one is now 13 and going strong so I think a good advert :)
 
With the Burns it said a mug twice a day for there weight, but it doesn't seem a lot at all. So they were having 1/2 tin of food too. One weights 22kg, the other 18kg, but that seemed a little helping to me!

The fish4dogs maybe ok, unless the choke on the stuff! ;-)
I've added a bit of warm water the past few feeds, and it seems to have gone down better.
 
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