Our spaniel is 12 weeks old now and we are still feeding her the dry food that the breeder started her on, Harringtons. Dog seems content enough and is growing well. I keep seeing articles about raw food and other variations so wondered if anyone has noticed a real benefit on moving onto any particular food or combination of foods.

I do like the price and convenience of dry but open minded to change where there are real benefits?

“My step mother and my infant half brother” – Ramsay Bolton

Baby Robins

I know raw stuff is the latest ‘trendy’ thing to do but we’ve always used dry food and they’ve been health, good coats and full of energy & more importantly poo picking the garden is not grim like it was on wet food. Though we use ‘working’ dog food, rather than the like of bakers chemical treats.

Hills mini bites

We have two Westies and have been using James Wellbeloved but have recently changed to Burns and have to say they seem to be doing well on it. http://burnspet.co.uk/

We have a 1 year old rottie and a 4 month old staffie cross. They both get a mixture of wainwrights dry and butchers wet, about halfie-halfie it ends up. It allows a bit of variety (they’re both Dogs Trust dogs and theyreckons dogs don’t get bored of only being fed spaceman niblets for their entire lives but I don’t see why they should only get crappy food) and the butchers is high meat content, without too much crap in it, for a reasonable cost.

They both seem to be thriving on it, although the staffie has the worst bedtime farts in history. We think that’s just a growing thing as the rottie went through a bit of it too. The Mrs’ aunt keeps banging on about putting her a raw food diet but honestly can’t be bothered and the stuff costs a fortune.

Gratuitous puppy photo – he’s A LOT bigger now 🙂

check the ingredients of dry food. i got ‘custody’ of one dog after the GF and i split up. when i went to buy food i compared the foo-foo stuff ‘we’ were buying at £40/bag to wagg, at £11/bag, and there was no difference in the contents.
dog has been happy and well on the cheap stuff ever since.
you want to feel like you’re doing the best for them, but TBH i think a lot of companies are trading on that.

dog was a fussy cow about food until she’d had her box out bits done, but that’s a different story.

6 year old lab here also on harringtons. He was a 10 month old rescue on wagg when we got him. Runny poo made me look for another food and harringtons came out quite well in a review without spending silly money.

We just stuck with what he came on at 12 weeks (Royal Canin Maxi Jnr) and moved it to Royal Canin Maxi Adult when he met the height/weight criteria.

Great coat, lots of energy, decent poos and seems happy.

Flirted with the idea of raw but not got round to trying it yet.

Lies and broken dreams.

10 year old lab.. Acana light and fit

Chudleys.

Both of ours have had that since they were puppies and they turned out ok. Mind you, they have just moved onto the senior version as they are now getting a little old.

Agree with z1ppy.

My GSP gets bad guts (and I mean BAAAD!) if she eats anything but Skinner’s Rough and Ready. So she has had that for the last 7 years. Every day. Still gets just as excited as if it’s a live pheasant sitting there in the bowl.

James Wellbeloved Grain Free for the majority of his diet – 5 year old Bedlington. Singular benefit being that we had all sorts of ‘digestive’ issues on the cheap food the breeder recommended (!) but has been fine since we changed, shortly after we got him.

He gets ‘raw’ food intermittently as a treat – usually following a trip to the pet food place to stock up on the dry stuff. Going on his reaction I think Stan would prefer a wholly raw diet…

Two rescue lurchers, one has serious anxiety issues which seemed to get worse based on the food we gave her. We tried pretty much everything, middle of the road ones JWB etc to the really expensive ones, fish for dogs etc. The more expensive ones were brilliant. In the end we settled on Berriman’s, it’s about £50 per bag but it’s superb.

Autarky is also pretty good, probably by far the cheapest ‘natural’ food out there, we used it for a while before they suddenly decided not to eat while on holiday one year.

Parents have fed their dogs the BARF diet for many years, their dogs are happy, great condition and coats etc. and very calm.

James Wellbeloved fish-based dry, senior specific stuff for our 14ish year old mongrel. He’s pretty susceptible to stomach problems in his old age, this stuff is great. Coat etc in fine nick.

In his younger years he got whatever James Wellbeloved stuff that was on offer at the time.

James Wellbeloved dry mixed with a bit of Lily’s kitchen meat for our border terror.

2yr old Lab-Springer cross here. she eats Wainwrights grain free and bar having the *ss-end of satan she’s as fit and healthy as can be. she has no issues around eating it every single day. we did have to resort to using a dog bowl with three protrusions in the bowl to stop her from hovering the food up instantly, so now she has to take her time which helps with digestion.

though she does get plenty of food treats to keep it varied. she’d happily sit there and much her way through a kilo bag of carrots if she could

Dr Johns hypo allergenic lamb and rice, no wheat, £16 for big bag (15kg). Got 10 year old Spanish water dog and 5year old springer, tried them on all sorts including the rip-off wellbeloved and taste of the wild to name a couple………..Dr Johns cheapo definitely their favourite (and their poos are a joy to scoop compared to the more expensive brands!)

Used raw food on the previous dog which helped calm it down but was a faff storing it and defrosting it! Did it ever stink!

We use fish for dogs on the current dog which is dried food but is great, he’s lovely and calm, no stinky farts and a nice glossy coat. It’s expensive but seems to be worth it.

http://www.fish4dogs.com

Cheers, Steve

I use 12kg bag of C S J specialist dog food. Costs £12.
Its good quality and a 3rd of the price of the same stuff in a well presented / marketed bag.
I also give her the odd scrap of food off the plate if there is anything worth having.

Tripe.

Good timing for this thread 😀 we’ve got a 6yr old Huntaway (well that’s FB’s best guess and he seems to fit the bill) after ‘just looking’ when the cat had died.

So the rescue home was using Autarky with some Chappie but the local PetsAtHome doesn’t stock Autuarky so we’re wondering what to move him onto.

5 yr old Working Cocker Spaniel: 1/4 pack of NatureDiet with a scoop of dry mixers for each meal – seems like a good combination to me, the NatureDiet is a kind of damp meat mix with some rice/veggies mixed through it. He loves the stuff (although he’ll happily eat anything he finds, including actual crap) and his weight has stayed very steady for years.

Dogs have about 1,706 taste buds. Compared to humans with 9,000 taste buds, that leaves them with a palate six times inferior to ours. Their taste buds are set on the tip of your pooch’s tongue, and they can taste bitter, sweet, sour and salty flavors just like us. Their sense of taste though, is not very developed, which is why you can feed a dog the same dog food every day, and they love eating things that make you want to puke… like puke.

http://www.organicauthority.com/pets/dog-taste-buds-palate-food.html

Same info from lots of sources. Basically, they can’t taste food too much and won’t mind if you give them the same thing every day.

My 8 year old working cocker has been on Burns from 16weeks. He loves it and it’s easy to pick up afterwards 😉
We get on subscription from Amazon, with an automatic delivery every two months.

Whatever dry stuff is on offer topped up with leftovers. Given the shite* they eat when they’re out I can’t imagine our choice of food does them any harm. Dry food for dry turds too.

*literally and figuratively

Bizarrely my 7 month old lab is a nightmare to feed. So far we’re on the third attempt at kibble, Pedigree, Harrington, Bakers. She eats at best one hearty meal every couple of days, but otherwise picks at her grub. She’s fit and lean, but is small for a lab ( though she is working strain so was never going to be huge). My lad works for a wholesale butcher, so we are contemplating raw meat and bones. Just need a freezer and we can have all the heads, tripes, ribs and offal we can carry for nowt.

Some daftly expensive stuff from the vet which helps with his many ailments plus the odd bit of cheese and ham every morning to disguise the taste of his various tablets. Why can’t they make doggie drugs taste like chicken or something?

Skinners, you can buy it VAT free and n Mole Valley, less than £20 a sack for a variety of different types. I feed my springer on the hypoallergenic stuff, either duck or salmon, he loves it.

Did I read somewhere that dogs are wheat intolerant yet most dry foods are bulked out with wheat?

Dr Johns Silver chicken. It’s the same as Arkwrights but bigger pellets that is supposed to encourage chewing rather than gulping and reduces endings. Not really noticed!

It’s classed as working dog food so VAT free and £11.50 for 15kg bag.

Dog is a fussy beggar and won’t touch anything else. Ok dog food wise. Leave loaves of bread, croissant or blocks of butter out at your peril…

Another vote for Dr Johns hypo allergenic, I run 2 springers on it for a good price at £16 for 15kgs.

The Dr John’s range are cheap, generally vat free as working dog range and aren’t marketed with loads of BS.

There is a great website out there that shows you how bad most of the dog foods are, so you can work out the best for your dog for your budget.

http://www.allaboutdogfood.co.uk/the-dog-food-directory

Lily’s Kitchen wet and dry for my two terriers. The Jack russell will, and does, eat any old crap, but the Fell Terrier is more choosy. He loves this stuff though, and they both got a lot hairier when we started feeding it.
Scramblec eggs in the mornings with a few bikkies.
Happy dogs.

5 yr old Working Cocker Spaniel: 1/4 pack of NatureDiet with a scoop of dry mixers for each meal – seems like a good combination to me, the NatureDiet is a kind of damp meat mix with some rice/veggies mixed through it. He loves the stuff (although he’ll happily eat anything he finds, including actual crap) and his weight has stayed very steady for years.

Same here with springer for 10 years ….also seems to get a lot of m@s chicken breasts nowadays…

Our Tibetan terrier/spaniel cross eats Royal Canin Cocker spaniel, with a bit of Cesar Country Kitchen (the stuff that’s more like mince than pate) mixed in. He gets half in the morning, half in the evening, it took bloody AGES to find something that he’ll eat (he’s surprisingly picky for a dog that will happily eat horse poo), and that agreed with his delicate little prince of a stomach?

We went through loads of brands – Wellbeloved dry (would eat, gave him the shits), Arden Grange dry (wouldn’t eat), Chappie tinned (would eat, nasty poops), Bakers dry (we do not speak of it). Fortunately he’s been on his current combo for years now, he certainly seems happy and healthy, with good, firm poops. Although he did have a bad stomach a few months back due to snaffling something off the pavement on a nighttime walk, possibly some sort of pasty remnant – I came home to find his diarrhoea on the kitchen floor, poor sod (he never fouls in the house unless he’s ill). I was trying to clean it up, but unfortunately I was suffering from morning sickness at the time, so Mr Toast came home to remnants of dog poo and his wife being sick on the floor.

Poor Mr Toast. 🙁

Fish for dogs here as well, 7yr whippet.

Although it is a bit more expensive than ‘supermarket’ brands, it’s so nutritious we were able to reduce his daily portion size and still maintain a healthy wheight/coat etc.

Skinners for years now. Salmon and Rice as it’s easier on the tummy and good for baggable rather than runny bombs!
Skinners develop food foe working animals so there isn’t tax on it (I think) and it’s about £26 for 15kgs. In terms of content, it’s up there with the best rejected products.

Oh and don’t worry about puppy food or development food just get them on adult staff asap.
Oh and don’t give them tv or supermarket brands, it’s full of rubbish – like giving kids fast food
Same for treats.

6yr-old Spaniel X Boxer and 2yr-old rescue Staffie X Boxer – both on Natural Instinct and Nutriment raw. Used to feed working dog dry stuff, the usual; having done a lot of reading I wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole now. I’m sure plenty of people say their dogs are fine on it but the older one is far better since we switched.