Well my dear old Fletch was on JWB Lamb & Rice as he always seemed to have a rather delicate tum. I tried other [cheaper if I'm honest] brands but he always got the gallops on them so we always came back to the JWB.
Mack started on JWB when we picked him up as his previous owner sent no food with him which caught me out rather so, as it was very late and I had a new sack left over from Fletch, he had to have that but he didn't really seem to enjoy it much. However, it would appear that no matter what I give Mack he has a cast iron stomach as I have tried a couple of other brands such as Beta and Arden Grange in small portions mixed in with his JWB and he has settled with the Arden Grange Lamb & Rice as he quite obviously loves it and again, no tummy issues at all.
I buy it online [Pet Supermarket] as it's heaps cheaper than buying it at our local Jollyes pet store and the delivery is free and fast.
Hi Sharon,
Sam, too has a cast-iron stomach, and I feed him Bakers Chicken or Beef, all in one, plus some vegetables and bits of cooked chicken and meat, and he thrives on it, and does not put on weight.
Best wishes - Samsmum.
Good nutrition is vital of course and sadly there are many dog foods on the market that use inappropriate and cheap forms of protein and that are are full of all kinds of unwanted chemicals. If feeding a commercial food be sure to carefully read the ingredients list and beware of such things as " animal derivatives" which is a sure sign of poor quality . Remember dogs are basically carnivores so most of their protein should come from meat not grain and avoid products full of artificial preservatives as well as colour and flavour enhancers. In an ideal world we would all provide a fresh diet prepared at home but if like most of us you buy commercial food do take the trouble to find a high quality brand to give your best friend the best chance of a long and healthy life.
We feed our 4 year old on Royal Canin, have done since she was weened. She has a good constitution, very few upsets despite doing the Goldie eat literally anything she can find.
Our Old Boy was a Bakers boy, but when he got arthritis, a classic Goldie problem, the Vet recommended JD Science diet, and it stabilised his problem for the last three years of his life, would really recommend it. Contains lots of Chondritin and glucosamine.
We now use Burns chicken and rice for adult and mature dogs. I did use Lamb and Rice for a good while, but read that Burns don't recommend lamb and rice for older dogs, so made the switch. Both doing well on it. The lamb/rice was brilliant for Woodys slightly iffy tum, but no ill effects with the change over.
P.s. we buy online from GWTitmuss, order 2 bags at reduced rate and they deliver to the door.
We've shopped around for a grain/soy/dairy/corn food and come up with Simpsons 80:20. Bentley loves it - actually, so do the cats, I keep finding them nibbling away at it. One morning our 21 year old cat was choffing down Bentley's food while he stood by with a horrified look on his face. Bless him, he didn't even try to stop her eating it.
We used to order from Titmuss but new we use Zooplus and I've just ordered the last lot from Bitiba as it was a bit cheaper and also free P&P. Gone are the days of lugging it home from the shop.
Please don't think like that, don't beat yourself up thinking you might have done something wrong . You did the right thing at the right time, and it was for Todds well being.
Holly has Skinners Light and Senior dry food to eat. It contains glucosamine and helps prevent weight gain. She has had it for some years now and it suits her well Lesley, Steve and Holly
I think its horses for courses, all dogs are different both of mine are on Burns Penlan Farm moist, chicken brown rice & carrots with Burns mixer and they love it and it suits them...Bakers is one of the worst food on the market more E numbers in it than a MacDonald's, and yet....I have a friend who has her dog on it and he is thriving, so there you go, it depends on the dog....
Bit late getting involved in this thread, but here's what we do with Monty (who is a black lab, for anyone who doesn't know him, but he did come to us via this rescue centre).
When we first got Monty, he spent a couple of years on Royal Canin, and it was fine. He was perfectly healthy, really, as far as we could tell. I got chatting with a friend who is a dog behaviourist (and who Monty goes and stays with if we ever need to go away for a day or two), and discovered he fed his own labs a totally raw diet. I asked to see his menu plan, and it was very varied but very well-planned. A balanced mix of raw meat, vegetables, oils and bone content. His opinion was that dogs get much more digestible food from raw ingredients than from kibble (dry mix). It's also more enjoyable for them - eating the same thing day in day out must get boring, even for dogs. Why not try a more varied diet?
So, we did. We started off getting lots of minced chicken carcass from the butcher, and adding to this a mix of very finely-chopped fruit and vegetables (carrots, spring greens, broccoli, apples) and a teaspoon of cod liver oil. The veg needs to be very finely chopped otherwise it's hard for dogs to digest. This became his morning feed. In the evening, he got a more complex mix of several things (and this varied in makeup each day), including: brown rice, sweet potato, quinoa, porridge, cottage cheese, yoghurt, peanut butter, raw egg (plus shell), blueberries. He also got a bone (uncooked).
Now, at first it wasn't straightforward; we encountered two main problems. The first was judging the amount to feed him. We were aiming for about 3% of body weight in total per day, but at first we didn't judge it properly and he quickly started to put on weight. The second problem was that we were feeding him too much of one sort of meat (chicken), which is actually rather fatty from a minced carcass.
We've now started buying 400g packs of frozen meat from Pets at Home to use as the basis for his morning feeds - he gets half a pack a day, and his overall food breakdown looks like this:
Mornings:
400g, made up from:
200g of meat (Beef, Chicken, Turkey & lamb, Green tripe, White fish - half a 400g pack from Pets at Home). Sometimes he gets a whole mackerel, or a pile of sprats instead.
200g of minced veg & fruit prepared in a food processor (make up to 3 or 4 days supply ahead of time and keep in tupperware boxes in the fridge)
A teaspoon of cod liver oil
Evening:
400g, made up from:
Raw bone (approximately 200g - I buy several weeks supply from the butcher and we cut them to approximately 200g pieces before freezing)
The remaining weight (400g - the bone weight) provided in varying choices daily of brown rice, sweet potato, quinoa, porridge, cottage cheese, natural yoghurt, peanut butter, raw egg (plus shell), blueberries.
He gets 3 good walks every day, and this overall combination of food and exercise seems to be spot on for him.
Benefits?
The most noticeable benefits are:
- His (black) coat, which now gleams and is silky and soft
- His teeth, which are spotless (at a recent check-up the vet commented on this, and we explained that he gnawed on bones daily, which the vet agreed would explain it)
- Less poo! Yes, there was rather more in the first day or two of the switch, whilst his digestive system adjusted, but since then there is just far less waste. This is because dry mix contains lots of filler, which is completely indigestible. Raw food, by comparison, is almost completely absorbed, and the result is much less and much drier excrement.
An interesting side-effect is that he now drinks almost nothing. I was a little concerned at first, but apparently this is quite normal since the raw food contains a very high moisture content. The ony time he drinks now is if he's been out running on a warm day, or has managed to find something to eat whilst out on a walk that he really shouldn't have eaten (we all know labs do this!)
All this started out as seeming very complicated and time-consuming, and it was when we were having to weigh out individual portions of chicken mince into plastic bags, add the chopped veg, then freeze them in bulk. Since adopting the pre-packed meat, though, and having got much more practiced at preparing the veg, it's really very easy indeed to prepare a few days ahead and keep it in the fridge. We save a bit of money over dry mix, although I suspect we don't save a fortune. However, Monty seems to enjoy his food much more than before, and he's visibly healthier for it. We won't be changing back.
Hopefully you'll be able to judge for yourselves soon as we hope to be able to come to the Fun Day in September this year (at last!). See you then!
We started Bentley on a raw diet a few months ago. The main reason was to keep his diet as clean as possible to try and eliminate any epilepsy triggers.
It hasn't made a blind bit of difference to his epilepsy but he's in fantastic condition. Like Phil we misjudged it a bit and he put on weight for a while.
Of course he's always enjoyed his food but now he shakes with excitement when it's put down for him. We get ours from The Dog's Butcher which delivers UK wide but is based just up the road from us in Bovey Tracey. It's delivered in 1 kilo packs of which Bentley gets 850 is grams a day.The hardest bit of the raw food diet was getting used to the smell. Good Lord!!! My stomach used to heave. The trick, I have discovered is to portion it up while it's still half frozen so it doesn't stink quite so much. Bones we get from our local butcher.
The fist time we gave him ( Bentley not the butcher) a raw egg it was hysterical. He carried around so gently in his mouth not knowing what it was. Then he dropped it and realised there was food inside!! Now he just takes it out of our hand and drops it on the floor. Suffice to say that happens outside.
I ordered 10 chickens feet for him as treats. Well, I thought I did. What I actually ordered was 10 KILOS of chickens feet. After a couple of days I had to stop giving them to him as he was eating them whole and scratching his insides, no need to ask me how I know that, suffice to say I've become rather the expert on poo. Next doors dog, Murphy got the rest of the chickens feet, at least he chews them.
Here's a photo of some delicious and nutritious green tripe *vomit*
As you can see, Bentley is looking great on it.
Dancing on the beach with Ellie
He sat on the painter and decorators paint tin lid. that involved a haircut
We all went out as marauding pirates, well, it was the pirate festival!
Love the photographs of Bentley and he looks so well on his food.........looks like he's been 'tupped' with the blue paint on his bum!!!!!
But OMG Lesley.......that is gross to have to deal with, reminds me of the time that Cobi was sick in my car and Ginnie was trying to get far away from her, when we opened the back up, there was the entrails of a deer with the stomach and kidney still attached all over the vet beds.... Ugh, never know how Cobi swallowed it, just glad it came up. My vet puts photographs of 'things' that dogs have swallowed on his Facebook page !!!! a recent one was dog food that the springer had got stuck in his oesophagus just above his heart.
Fish skins flatties from http://www.angellpetco.com are now a favourite with our (not so little) madam, and she does have raw marrowbones from our butcher a couple of times a week. Strangely Cobi gave up eating bones after Ginnie died, they both enjoyed a marrowbone and swopped over half way through. Calli came at 8 weeks with a raw diet and I did try to carry it on for a month or so, Natures Instinct but we weren't very impressed with the way it was packaged or with the only two places nearby (9 miles) that I could buy it from, and it was totally inconvenient and impractical when away caravanning....so I changed over to Forthglade, (http://www.forthglade.com) a wet food in a tray, no nasty additives, it smells lovely, butternut squash and duck, tripe, chicken, lamb and brown rice, vegetables all manner of different versions in the trays, and made in Devon.
25 years ago Les and I tried the Cambridge diet for a couple of months, and every time we opened up a can of Winalot Prime we were jealous of our dogs, the lovely smell of their food in a rich gravy !!!!!!!!!!
There is a good website for anyone who wants to see what is in their dog's food or treats. As I now know that some of the chicken coin treats (Pet Munchies) I used to give Cobi were made in China, and they don't really care what additives they put into preserving the treats, some treats have similar properties to antifreeze in which is toxic to dogs, I now feel very guilty that I didn't always know where things were made. http://www.allaboutdogfood.co.uk
There is a caution of note on this website regarding....
The Animal Health Trust are reporting a recent spate of pet health problems linked with the consumption of meat jerky treats imported from China. Despite on-going investigations, the cause is so far unknown. We therefore advise caution. If you do feed jerky treats, we recommend that you feed them in small quantities and only on occasion. This is especially important for small-breed dogs.
http://www.zooplus.co.uk is website I use, their prices are very good and delivery by DPD is very convenient with a one hour time slot.
so we always came back to the JWB.
as I have tried a couple of other brands such as Beta and Arden Grange in small portions mixed in with his JWB and he has settled with the Arden Grange Lamb & Rice as he quite obviously loves it and again, no tummy issues at all.
After a couple of days I had to stop giving them to him as he was eating them whole and scratching his insides, no need to ask me how I know that, suffice to say I've become rather the expert on poo. Next doors dog, Murphy got the rest of the chickens feet, at least he chews them.
that involved a haircut 
