How much do you think about what you feed your dog?

Stinkbomb

Stinkbomb

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There are always posts about "what should i feed my horse?" etc... loads of them!! So i was wondering we all seem to really think about what we feed our horses but do we think the same about our dogs???

I have done lots of reseach since getting Alfie and he is now a raw fed dog
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Im sure the OH thinks im mad but i just want the best for him.

How much thought do you make when deciding what to feed??
 
Ideally I'd like to make their food myself. As a veggie I couldn't have all that meat in the fridge (the smell makes me heave
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) but I could boil up some tripe now and then to make batches of fresh food. The only thing that stops me is how complicated it gets. I contacted a nutritionist someone on here recommended and the diet sounded fab but I couldn't get my head round it. I may well give it a bash though as I'm not 100% happy with what they have at the mo. They are on Country Pursuit working dog (wheat/gluten/additive free....a poor mans James Wellbeloved!) plus Naturediet meat made into a gravy and half a sardine for Alf and Indie who have joint problems, but I feel I could do better for them.
 
TBH if you had asked me this time last year I would have said 'no thought at all'
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My greyhound and lurcher had standard all-in-one, never really any problems, always healthy etc.

Quite honestly now I have no idea what I am going to feed my dogs in the future! Islay seems fit, healthy and active at only 5 years old, but having seen how Jura and Talisker have ended up I am already thinking I will change her to a sensitive stomach diet (James Wellbeloved or Burns) before too long, to try and ward off future problems.

If Talisker does recover from his current illness - and I am not at all sure he will do - then he will be on a sensitive all-in-one diet too - maybe JWB or more likely something a bit more specialist/veterinary
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I have a "pack" of five (3x springers, 1 Munsterlander and 1 Golden Retriever) aged between a year and three and a half years. My two "baby" springers have "delicate tummies" but I've had no problem with Chudleys Sensitve and the other three have Chudleys Working Crunch in the morning (usually with a spoonful or two of that dreadful tinned stuff!) and in the evening they have raw meat - a local butcher saves all the "bits" and I usually get two carrier bags per week for £5 - and they love it! My three and a half year old Springer is a fussy madam, but she loves all the the raw chicken pieces etc, and their coats are just beautiful! I recently spoke to a "friend" (I used that term rather carefully!) who said she was just cooking some chicken for her dog...."Oh, mine love it raw!" I said. "You can't give them raw chicken!" said "friend", "Yes you can - haven't you heard of BARF?". Basically, no she hadn't, she didn't agree with anything I said, and thought I was totally mad and my dogs would choke to death on the bones.............they look pretty good to me at the moment..............
 
My dogs always get raw meat and bone, makes dogs much less hyper. Even though these foods say additive free they are not.

Keeperscottage you should tell your friend never to feed cooked chicken bones to her dogs they can very easily tear the intestines!
 
I think about it as far as I make sure they have a good quality complete food as a base, which i change reguarly for interest (varies between autarky, chudleys, jwb etc).

I also get those enormous marrow bones (femurs i think?!) that the butcher saws in half for Boss, usually with a load meat and yukky stuff on which he loves!!

I also feed a carrot every day for their teeth and I have to confess that he might get my sons lunchtime leftovers, although I feed my son well so it's not rubbish. I bought a kong last week but he keeps leaving it at the bottom of the garden so unless he brings it back to the house, I'm not going to get it, it's freezing here!!

I'm on my own during the week and have two little ones so I haven't got the time to cook for them and can't be doing with defrosting meat around the baby's bottles, too much hassle!!

ETA that I can't feed any other kind of bones than the enormous ones, Boss actually chews his way through them until there's nothing left so chicken bones and ribs are a no no for him, jaws of steel!
 
I don’t think about it at all! We free feed our five, two Weimaraners, Rhodesian Ridgeback, Standard Poodle and Staffy.

They have a couple of washing up bowls down and full of food at all times. We feed Supadog Sensitive purely because our Weimaraner boy has a delicate tum and it works for him. The rest do really well on it too.

We used to feed them all twice a day and it was a nightmare. Top dog would try to steal everyone elses, if we shut four out while one fed there would be fighting between the others outside so we find free feeding works for us.

The dogs regulate their intake really well and because they know the food is always there don’t bolt it down or eat it all at once. None of the dogs are fat either.
 
Never, until I got my current two.

We used to feed tripe, which IMO is the best thing you can feed.
The it was Favour (local company) with warm water, because it was cheap. My Nan would have fed bread, milk, and whatever we hadn't eaten at tea time.
Dog was fed once a day.

HOWEVER - our last female came being fed twice a day, so we stuck to it, she got whatever she got, usually Beta or Feedwell.

(again, being fed twice a day) but their condition wasn't good so changed to Arden Grange.

Boydog subsequently developed allergies so he was switched to James Wellbeloved, which seems to be working, and girly still gets AG.
 
My dog is very easy to feed in that he eats what we do, he has biscuits ( james wellbeloved ) as his staple food and then a salmon steak, tuna or meat and then chopped up veggies. He thrives on this and has never been ill, touch wood.
 
I feed mine JWB as their basic diet, they are VERY well on it, recently I was ill and unable to get out much and hubby bought them a cheaper food, in the space of 3 weeks thier coats had gone dull, breaths smelt and thier poo had gone really soft. They are now back on it with the occasional bone fromt the btucher ( I hate the smell) and are looking fantastic. It also helps my naturally skinny collie keep his condition.
 
My great-grandmother fed her dog a portion of porridge in the morning + any leftovers, if there were any. My mother says she's never since seen a GSD with such shiny coat and looking so healthy.

My mother got a standard poodle when she was teenager. He was fed a few slices of black pudding each day, + sometimes a little hard bread and on special occasions a boiled heart or something similar from the butcher. Died almost 15 years old, more or less toothless and with some minor leakage problem.



Personally I feed my dogs 4 meals a day + a carrot after the last pee in the evening (they soon learn to do their business as fast as possible, so they can go inside and have their carrot, and I don't have to stand outside half a sleep, waiting for a puppy that wants to do and try everything except do their business).
And unless some temporary veterinary diet is needed, there's a woman skilled in nutrition, that is making her own brand of of dog food for people like me, that doesn't dare to take the step to feed BARF. There's a long list of things that her brand doesn't contain, such as artificial flavor or colour, wheat etc.
She herself fills her freezer with dead rooster-chickens, and her dogs eats one raw a day.



from Sweden.
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ETA that I can't feed any other kind of bones than the enormous ones, Boss actually chews his way through them until there's nothing left so chicken bones and ribs are a no no for him, jaws of steel!


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They are supposed to chew the ribs and chicken bones till they are all gone!! They are classed as "consumable" as oppose to a femour or marrow bone that is classed as "recreational" i.e. they dont actually eat the bone
 
No, Rubysurfer, I don't for one minute believe my friend feeds her dog cooked chicken bones - it's just the cooked meat she feeds! I've never seen it but, knowing her, it's probably a lap dog and never allowed off the lead - she's one of those people who's too frightened to turn her horse out in case it gets injured in the field (honestly!) even though it (and her previous horses) always seem to have lameness problems. She had a go at me for leaving my horses out in the summer 24/7 and still actually RIDE them!!!!! (I only hack - never compete.)
 
That should have read: Current two came with Royal Canin
(again, being fed twice a day) but their condition wasn't good so changed to Arden Grange.

Boydog subsequently developed allergies so he was switched to James Wellbeloved, which seems to be working, and girly still gets AG.

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ETA that I can't feed any other kind of bones than the enormous ones, Boss actually chews his way through them until there's nothing left so chicken bones and ribs are a no no for him, jaws of steel!


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They are supposed to chew the ribs and chicken bones till they are all gone!! They are classed as "consumable" as oppose to a femour or marrow bone that is classed as "recreational" i.e. they dont actually eat the bone

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You're probably right, he just seems to snap them into loads of little pieces and I worry about them getting stuck in his throat or gut... he thinks the marrow bone is consumable, he just gnaws at them till there's nothing left, usually in an afternoon! No wonder the posties scared!
 
My dog has quite a sensitive tum, so I am careful what I feed her. She normally has Burns or JWB, but I am economising at the moment and giving her that Country Pursuit stuff which seems to be fine for her.
 
I think about it alot
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Hence my dog is fed raw / natural diet. Everyone comments on how good/ healthy he looks.

However - I do think that it really is horses for courses - I don't think everyone should feed they way i do - I just wish people would choose better quality comercial stuff. Is not wrong to feed it - just wrong not to feed the best you can (or can afford - whichever really). After all - the dog only gets one life and you take responisbility for ensuring it has the healthiest / happiest life it can.

So long as people have thought about it a bit - that makes me happy.

What I don't like is when people say 'Well I've fed little scamp for 10 years on Bakers Complete and he's happy/ healthy enough - so I'm not changing'
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makes me so sad... couldn't they just read up about it? I don't get the enthusiasm / blind faith for something they haven't read about... Because if you read about it / saw the ingredients - you wouldn't feed it...

Maybe little scamp would live a few years longer and have less health probs in later life if they changed to something better... even if they seem healthy now - alot of that damage is over time...

sorry - that turned into a mini rant
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I have always given Piglet JWB. She was on this through her pregnancy and changed to the JWB puppy 2weeks before she whelped. She has remained on this and the puppies got it made into a paste with warm water when they were small and not they are 6weeks they are happily munching it dry. Mum always looked greatand the puppies are thriving so i wouldnt want to change.
My OH had to get dog food a while ago and bought some bakers complete biscuits. He poo was soft and she had wind and wasnt eating as well as normal - she was just picking out the meaty bits. I wasnt happy and the rest went in the bin and she was straight back on the JWB
 
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What I don't like is when people say 'Well I've fed little scamp for 10 years on Bakers Complete and he's happy/ healthy enough - so I'm not changing' makes me so sad... couldn't they just read up about it? I don't get the enthusiasm / blind faith for something they haven't read about... Because if you read about it / saw the ingredients - you wouldn't feed it...


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Totally agree with you. We fed Malic on bakers because 1. we THOUGHT he was doing ok on it and 2. We didnt know any better.

when we got Alfie i decided to do some research and it really opened my eyes. I felt so guilty that i didnt do better by Malic with his food that i thought im not doing that again. Malic did have alot of problems but it really made me think that some of them MAY have been avoided if we had looked into his diet alot better
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Our girls are fed the cheapest complete food we can find! It's a bog basic working dog mix, and they have always done very well on it - shiny coats, non-runny tums. If we ever run out of big bags and have to get something else as a stop gap, they get all farty and stinky
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An awful lot of thought over quite a few years!! My sister first fed raw in the family as her pack of working Huskies had problems having been fed a well known commercial food. The manufacturers told her her dogs were allergic to chicken and had sensitive stomachs, at the time she believed the spin. They told her to change the type of food every three months and things improved.

A friend introduced her to Billingshurst’s book and it immediately became apparent why changing the feed worked, he explains that different commercial dried “food” has different composition and it takes about 3 months before the deficiencies in that sack start to materialise. Once on raw the itching stopped, the dihorreah stopped, the teeth were clean etc etc etc as all those on raw will know from looking at their own dogs! Oh and they have a lot of chicken these days!!!!!!! Now she has 3 generations of raw fed dogs and they perform better too.

She tried to persuade me but I sadly was resistant at first like most, until my beloved little scruffy mutt died of intestinal cancer, I read the book and cried, if only I had not listened to the sales hype she might have lived longer! Since that day in 1998 no commercial “food” has passed the lips of my dogs. I do my best to vary their diet and at the moment they are loving the seasonal turkey legs at a very reasonable price from ASDA, and the deer ribs and rabbit heads from the game butcher, the current lot are happy healthy and I would never go back to that stuff, I can’t imagine what it is like to eat that dried or overcooked diet day in day out, I sure as hell wouldn’t.

I did a lot of research and also read a rather alarming book from the USA on what goes into some commercial dog food and how it is prepared, not that I needed persuading but the shock of that made me sure I was doing the best for my dogs.

Though Sis and I have departed from the Billingshurst start, I have spread the word and helped people that want to do this for their dogs and cats, and have even persuaded someone to successfully feed a gun dog raw without problems, that was a Springer who had a VERY dodgy tummy. It is not a big deal it is really easy to manage the diet, it is cheaper and if I forget to defrost something they do not object to meat lollies either especially in summer.
 
Yes, we put a lot of thought into what we feed ours. Our huskies (and the collie) get Royal Canin 4300 high energy food. Huskies can be tricky to feed - they need very little but what they do get needs to be good. We tried a few other feeds but they burned out on it.
We did try raw for a while but it just didn't work for ours. That said, we get chicken caracasses and other bones for them which they get at least once a week. Good for their teeth, and a nice treat! It's what suits your own dog(s). I do think there are some really poor quality foods about though. And also many overpriced ones.
 
Is it wrong to admit I don't give any thought to it?

He gets chudleys working crunch - purely because that is what the horse feed place supply for dogs

and raw minced meat (from those frozen slabs you can buy) - because thats what the dogs I have known have been fed!

At the end of the day I have a happy healthy dog who gets glowing reports from anyone who meets him so maybe, ignorantly, i don't feel the need to look any more in depth.
 
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