Dried Dog Meal

[phutoie2]

What is the general opinion of dog owners and breeders on dried dog food over here, there is huge variety on sale.

Our local pet shop is now stocking a type from Betagro and tried to sell me a bag of it yesterday.

Our 3 dogs (Husky/Bang Kaew & Heinz 57) generally dislike the stuff and much of it gets left in the bowl. The wife and I are probably guilty of feeding them too much fresh meat & fish plus the market meat on sticks stuff! when they were young.

I imagine it may be too late to change their eating habits now, with the Bang Kaew she can go days without food and when hungry just pops out into the fields to catch something fresh - especially fish. I often point out to the wife - "no point feeding her!".

Currently using Pedigree, Appreciate all advice - thanks.

[isanbirder]

I use APro with a little cheap tinned food (actually tuna scraps) to taste.for the GSX and SmartHeart for the toy poodle; they have no problem with it, and are completely healthy, as far as I can tell! I very rarely give them fresh meat, or food scraps; these are unnecessary if the basic diet contains all the vitamins etc that a dog needs. (They do pick up scraps, though, I know, because our maebaan throws them out for the chickens... and dogs are good scavengers.)

[Gary A]

My dog is not especially fond of any dried dog food. He is now eating Strong Heart roast beef flavored and it seems that is his favorite if you can call it a favorite. I buy Tesco cat food by the can. It is mostly chopped fish of various kinds. I mix a couple of spoons of that with his dried food and any leftovers we have, he likes rice. The oily fish seems to keep his coat nice and shiny. He gets fed twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening.

I did buy a bag of Dog N Joy brand and he absolutely refused to eat it. I refused to throw it away and he got about half a cup mixed with his other food until it was gone.

[katabeachbum]

My rottweiler likes Pedigree Pal. He preferes to have it mixed with left overs, fat from frying etc, but can eat the dry food only. However if I wasnt so lazy, I should have fed him with natural stuff as its inexpensive in TH and easily available in any market. Travelling dry food is unbeatable and easy, and we travel a lot

[doggie888888]

My dog is on a raw food diet. She is off dried food or commercial dog food completely, and has been a picture of health ever since. Whilst on dog food, she had skin problems and issues with allergies (vet kept prescribing hypo allergenic food, medicines, creams etc but all to no avail). A few weeks after being on a raw food diet, voila no more health issues.

If you are interested, you can google and there is a wealth of material out there, just choose those from reputable sites.

[meatboy]

we have an alaskan husky,he loves beef stew,chicken,pork with 3or 4 veg,dried biscuits,pedigree he finds a bit salty so we changed to smartheart a bit better and some rice and gravy,we also give him some beef jerky and pizza for a treet.and he loves us to bits,how do we know he tells us.

[Cuban]

AGAIN Seems my earlier reply was "lost".

Without re-writing a full informative post with nice words.

Research and fed a BARF diet and stop abusing your dog with bulked out food industry by-products.

Pet 'food' is brown regardless of type because of the use of reprocessed blood to provide animal protein that can be listed at the ingredient. This is gelled up and bulked out with low grade cereals to make something that human eyes thinks is 'food', it is then sprayed with animal fat to make a dog's nose think it is food.

But is you fed a simple BARF diet of chicken carcasses you know that you are giving a nutriment rich food that is 100% chicken. My dogs like mackerel too.

All bones should be RAW, it is cooked bones that are dangerous.

Dogs on BARF diets do not have bad teeth, bad breath or produce wet smelly sh1t.

[LeCharivari]

KBB, one of the worst things you can feed any dog, particularly a Rottweiler, is cooking fat or cooking oil. Dogs can suffer from high cholesterol just as people do, although the HDL/LDL ratios are different, and Rottweilers and Dobermanns are particularly prone to hyperlipidemia. Mix anything else with a dried food if you have to, such as soup or gravy, but avoid anything with a high fat content like cooking fat.

Cuban, the BARF (Bones And Raw Food/Biologically Appropriate Raw Food) diet is certainly a good diet, particularly for dogs with allergies, although there are others – no one diet is suitable or ideal for all dogs. I don’t know exactly what diet you feed your dogs, but it should include far more variety than just fish and chicken carcasses and should never include chicken bones (raw or cooked) – even with a strict BARF diet around one third of it should be fresh or pre-digested fruit and vegetables.

The BARF diet was originally an alternative to an increasingly processed food diet, preferred not because it was “natural” but because it was healthy, but it is now increasingly sold as the only “natural” diet for dogs, cats and many zoo animals and rather bizarrely the originators of the diet are now selling “processed BARF”! The BARF diet claims to be “ the diet a dog evolved to eat – over many millions of years of evolution”. The reality is that even the timber wolf, from which most people consider the domestic dog is descended, only appeared around 15,000 years ago (at the most 50,000 years). The modern domestic dog has continued to evolve, particularly by selective breeding in the last 1,500 years, and the BARF diet is no more (or less) “natural” for a domestic dog today than it is for people, so anyone who is feeding their dog the BARF diet because they think it is “natural” for them should be eating an identical diet themselves.

It is a good diet, but it is far from as simple as it first appears and it is particularly problematic if you and your dogs travel, you have a lot of dogs, or if you have children. Anyone considering it needs to do their homework on it first and to be aware of the dangers as well as the benefits.

[AyG]

I'm no expert. I've only had my rescue puppy for a little over a week. What I have noticed, though, is that lots of websites say to check the ingredients of dry food list to ensure that meat is the first one. None of the brands I've looked at has that - not even the more expensive international brands. I find it disturbing that these international conglomerates are selling second class dog food using the same brand name in certain markets. At the moment I'm giving a little bit of meat or egg each day to supplement the food. Certainly my puppy much prefers the taste of real meat (not so much the egg), and picks all the bits of meat out first however finely I chop it.

[isanbirder]

One thing I find useful is to buy tins of cheap dogfood (which are mainly fish scraps) and mix some in with the dried food. Apart from improving the taste (I assume), the fish oil improves the condition of the dog's hair.