I know there a lot of dog owners on here so help out a confused new dog owner.

Right I am an old git who had a faithfull pouch 45 years ago and he ate a very varied diet of scraps and meat / bones some tinned dog food and owt he caught out in the woods IE the odd rabbit sometimes cooked and sometimes raw.

Now move on 45 years and I have become the owner of a parsons russell terrior ( well it is really my daughters but I will be looking after it most of the time)

well to say I am confused is an understatment .

the vet says give hime this dried complete stuff that smells terrible and that is all he needs

well having tried 4 different bags of the stuff Paddy the dog is not very impressed with any of them and will only eat it when starving .

now when googling dog feeding I find the raw meaty bones diet and it seems that what we fed our dog 45 years ago is the future .

so where do the STW dog lovers stand on what to feed fido

I feed my dog dry complete stuff but "coat" it in a little tinned dog meat! Works a treat every time!

Green/unwashed tripe,smells terrible but dogs love it & it's really good for them too.Ours(he's a 17mth old Boxer) had a pound of that in the morning & huge bowl of Greyhound complete mix for the rest of the day to snack on.

for my retreviers
dried dog food for my 13 yr old and for the 3 yr old dried food and minced morcels (remember the clemant froyd advert with the bloodhound)
now called highlife complete

Green ? unwashed tripe I assume is from the butchers and quite cheap .

what about bones yes or no .as he is chomping on one now

Fresh cats.

You can get tripe from most pet shops,it comes in frozen bags of 1 or 2 lb & it's 32p per lb.

PS.If you try it don't ever defrost it in the microwave,I did that once & the smell was terrible.We couldn't get ride of the smell when we used it after that & ended up having to get a new one !

dogs love routine, don't be tempted to give them different meals everyday. Supplement a good dry dog food with leftovers from your meals but don't feed him any too much starch like spuds and the like. A can of tuna in oil once a week will make his coat shine like a crufts champion.

naturdiet, my dogs have always loved it and he has rock hard dog eggs which are very easy to bag up, it err looks good enough to eat!

Bakers meat chunks for our border terrier, plus the occasional meaty pouch

After the shite all over my front wheel this a.m. I heartily recommend poison.

Dried food makes it easier for owners to pick up their pooh. My dog hated it. Vets promote it cos they get lots of money.

I fed my golden retriever frozen mince (complete with nasty bits) from the pet shop. Eventually she needed to change to Chappie, not as rich as Pedigree Chum, so kinder to her digestive system.

Good stuff in = good stuff out.

Well, perhaps good isn't the right term but you'll find that a dogs shiite will be harder and better formed and not too wet if the food is good. This suggests that the nutrients have been absorbed and all the godness is taken in by the dog.
The coat will shine and energy levels will be high.
I feed our dogs Eukanuba with fantastic results. If the food is changed it's noticeable within the week.
My mate races huskies and he says changing food can make the difference of many seconds lost off times.
Avoid multi-coloured dried stuff and tinned food it's not the best of stuff.

If you have money to burn and can't be bothered to make your own dog food (lets face it not many people do) I would suggest Royal Canin
http://www.royalcanin.co.uk/my_pet/product_finder.aspx

Not cheap but very good.

They even do breed specific stuff. My Lab loves this but then she will eat anything!

We use the Royal Canin dried and some packets of tripe and rice, forgotten who makes them now. Our dog is not a big eater mind.

James Wellbeloved dried when I last had a dog, especially if they have a dicky stomach. Dogs are omnivorous so should have some vegetable matter in the diet.
If you're truly minted then Denes tinned food and biscuits is fantastic. It used to cost me £70 a month when the Dalmatian dog was poorly. Poor stomach brought on by constant snacking on a bowl of food at his previous home.

My old Lab loves her Bakers fed her on it for the last 9 years gives her a nice shiny coat and is rather healthy for he age. Still gets the odd scraps of food they're scavengers by nature so does them no harm.

Have tried all sorts over the last year to try and find something to suit our two Lurchers. Look on the ingredients for 100% chicken meat, this is a good indication of the quality of the food. Pedigree/Bakers et all don't say this (I can't remember the terminology they use) Also look for the the lack of wheat in the make up, it's used as a filler/bulking agent and is apparently the casue of a lot of dog's skin/stomach problems – for which your vet will charge you obscene amounts to control with medication.

Among others I have tried James Well Beloved and Pro Plan foods, it sent my two bonkers, could control the one but the other is a real special needs case – she's genuinely scared of her own shadow and the food just made her dangerously skittish. It's just a matter of trial and error. Mine have settled on Berriman's complete. I get it for around £34 per 15kg bag, I give them the recommended daily amount and they're great on it. At the end of the day it's down to what you want to pay. You can get a bag of Chappie for £12 or Pro Plan for >£40 you pays your money you make your choice.

I do share my Sunday roast with them too, to a point where I've started cooking extra for them.

We used to feed our Jack Russell cooked hearts. It wouldn't eat normal dog food. We now feed our mastiff Supercoat dried dog food.

Cyanide

we feed our 10 1/2 yr old boxer a mixture of rice & purle barley with, brocoli, courgette, cauliflower, with either tuna/sardines/chicken/mince. for breakfast she has weetabix, banana & natural yougurt. lunch she has a carrot, supper an apple. it all started as a pup when she was allergic to soya. she eats more healthly than i do, but i wouldnt change it at all. all the vets are amazed how healthy she is for a 10yr old boxer! oh, her favourate food is fruit!!

Yep had a corgi that loved fruit and veg raw. First time I had ever seen a dog eat cherry tomatoes. 🙂

post men

We've go a staffie cross who can be picky about what he eats. Part of the problem is they will turn their noses up at dry food if there's something better on offer like table scraps. There are a few tricks to remember, like not giving them lots of choice. Also, with the dry food, try a little hot water on it and then let it cool. It softens the biscuit and forms a sort of gravy. With ours, he doesn't alsways like his food gifted to him, sometimes he'd rather have the dry food in a molecule ball. You can get them from pet shops, they roll them around with their noses and biscuit occasionally drops out so they have to work for their food. I'd imagine a parson's would love that. Stops them getting bored if you go out and leave them at all.

Drj, coyote, if you don't have anything to say regarding the topic then please, shut the !!ck up.

the vet says give hime this dried complete stuff that smells terrible and that is all he needs

He's right.

well having tried 4 different bags of the stuff Paddy the dog is not very impressed with any of them and will only eat it when starving

Erm, and the problem is?

A dog that wont eat, is either not hungry enough, or is ill – give it time and it will get used to the new food.

ONZA

Yes tried that with a sandwich box and he tried to open it for over an hour then inside the box was a crisp packet with the food in another 10 mins shredding the packet and eating the grub he loved it but wouldnt clear up the mess .

We have a Lab/Collie cross who get a very runny arse if he eats anything resembling dog food, or our food for that matter. Yes he gets the odd scraps, but not much and not every day. We put him on Burns rice kibble when he's in kennels as he does OK on that, but in the house we cook him up rice and white fish, with fruit or veg as a morning treat (usually apples, pears or carrots).

nice regular and solid poo, shiny coat and a hell of a lot of energy.

If we put him on anything too meaty or processed he gets the shits and behaves like a kid on smarties.

our border terrier is a greedy pig and will eat anything. but we give him dried food complemented by scraps of leftovers. he also scoffs wild blueberries and raspberries while out walking

We used to use the dry food, soften it with some hot water and then mix in some tinned wet food or some scraps to make it a bit more interesting. Tuna in oil was always popular. We also used to give her loads of grated veg – this bulks up the food a bit and gives 'em plenty of roughage.

A lot of butchers will do frozen pet food – which is usally a lot cheaper than the tinned stuff and at least you'll know where (and what) it came from. Tripe is ace but if your dog lives in the house, the smell can be terrible – they seem to sweat the smell out.

On the subject of dog eggs – harder is not better! Just because it is easier to pick up does not mean it is a good thing. A vet told me it shows that the dog is dehydrated and is reabsorbing all the moisture it can.

Eukanuba here, 12 year old lab and a 3 month old staffy, they both get on well with it, and it is easier to pick up "bonus!"

i own a five n hlf year old boxer who for as long as i can remember has suffered with digestion probs, I think we've narrowed it down to ibs but can never be sure. I've tried the natural 'barf' diet which resulted in regurgitated mackerel at 2 am in the morning, the carpet was never the same again. For the last year I would say now we've found a happy medium on the diet front which apart from an odd bout now n then keeps her toileting perfectly in check. Its a blessing really, if one more person looked at her n said how small and thin she was I think I would of screamed. She now eats 2 cartons of nature diet sensitive fish food a day plus half a cup of burns sensitive mixer (both of which if you check the ingredients have no rubbish in them like additives) as well as two scoops of fibre powder to keep her in check. For treats the only thing she is allowed is fish skins from a website called fish4dogs which she absolutely goes potty for. I think she'd leave me for a box of em!

She loves her diet now and eats and toilets like a normal dog, and shes a lean mean fighting machine! not an ounce of fat on her, pure muscle but instead of being scrawny with it with ribs showing shes just perfect (touchwood!)

Speaking both as a Jack Russell owner and a vet……
JRT's are picky awkward little sods to feed. The key is not to give in (mine took about 5 days of refusing dried food, sometimes even spitting it across the kitchen floor, before he realised I wasn't going to give in so he'd better eat or starve!) Dogs will not become anorexic, they will eat when hungry. Routine, as mentioned in a previous post, is also key. Don't leave food down all day for it, put a bowl down for 15-20 minutes, then remove it again. Meals are more natural for a dog's digestive system, which is used to having a meal once its caught a wild animal and not grazing all day like say a horse.
I feed my Milo on Royal Canin and agree it is good dried complete food. Using a little tinned meat with it is not a problem.
The 'Raw Meaty Bones' diet is controversial both with dog owners and vets alike. There may be some benefits but there are also many pitfalls. Having seen a Lhasa Apso go through hell for a week after tearing its gullet on a chicken wing bone, and being extremely lucky to still be alive, I would say if you are determined to feed raw meat, remove the bones.
I wouldn't be feeding my own dog on dried food if I thought it was causing any harm to him.

Kerry dawg is a fussy eater, will eat sheep shite, and chewed up gum of the pavement, I guess that comes from being an ex stray. But she wont eat many dried foods,

apart from 'Sneyd's wonderdog gold' this is a working dog food, coated in Molasses and and lots of scrumptious scratchings. £14 a 15 kg sack. From 'all animals in Ulverston'.
K dawg approved.

Drj, coyote, if you don't have anything to say regarding the topic then please, shut the !!ck up.

Don't be afraid, I'm only playing, I won't hurt you.

Isn't that how dog-owners usually excuse unprovoked aggression?

Food for humans is always at great pains to point out how natural, wholesome and untampered it is. Dry cat food on the other hand is covered in scientific bumf to show you how technical it is.

Weird, that.

Imo forget all the fancy stupid priced stuff.Tripe is a natural food with no additives,just because it's cheap doesn't mean it's nasty.Our last boxer had it every day of her life(tripe that is)with a complete food too & lived to the ripe old age of nearly 15 years(very rare for a boxer to last that long).Up until she was 13 she could still scramble over the 6 foot back fence too !
Best bet to keep your dog healthy,exercise 😉

We use Burns for Eric, and Esme has Burns for puppies..

Burns…

NOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo……

I get quite frustrated operating on seriously ill dogs with perforated intestines from eating "meaty bones"..ARGH!!!!!

As for only eating when he's starving – I think your doing what a lot of owners do and mistaking "starving" for just being hungry. If you tempt him with all sorts of treats yes he'll eat them, in the same way children who aren't really hungry will eat rubbish food….and end up fat & unhappy.

Eukanuba, Royal Canin, Hills – any quality complete diet is by far the best for your dog – you do tend to get what you pay for though.

Sorry – I get quite wound up about this.

I'll climb down now!

BARF (Biologically Appropriate Raw Food?)is great but expensive and pretty minging – do you fancy unwrapping a turkey neck or opening a shrink wrapped bag of raw animal mince every day? Plus you'll be needing a second freezer to keep it in!

Have friends who fed their German short haired pointer BARF for a few years – he looked like a horse! all muscle, super lean, shiny coat etc. It was too expensive, so their back to the closest kibble to BARF (Orijen)

Our Lab X shep is on Now! and Orijen (Canadian brands so probably not available in UK)
anyway, they are grain free foods with meat protein as opposed to rubbish protein.
Its a kibble but she eats it wet (with water) to help digestion
We mix those 2 foods together to keep a balance and supplement with buffalo bone/knuckle and raw broccoli stalk (no human food or left overs aside from licking out the empty yoghurt pot)

Whilst we like the idea of grain free food, there is thought that dogs in the wild ultimately do have grain as part of their diet – from the stomach contents of their prey.

We did the large breed puppy food first then switched to adult.

She will eat anything, but we think we're doing the best we can afford without going silly. I'd never resort to feeding pedigree or supermarket stocked brands.. that's like feeding your kid MacDonalds every day imo.