Firstly, I really don't want this to turn into a which is best thread. We all have different opinions on food, we're never all going to agree. Please don't try to make others feel bad if they are not feeding the diet you consider to be the best.

What I'm wondering is why you all settled on the diets you have chosen for your dogs? I'm curious as to why people come to the decisions they do, especially given all the conflicting info.

Have your opinions changed? And with them your dogs diet?

Is it a case of you've always fed (insert food type here) and see no reason to change?

For me, I started with awful kibble, was told in puppy class that it was terrible, did some research and swooped to a good kibble. Novak was always a grazer. We got Bailey, he eats anything and everything, loves food, whatever form it comes in.

Then Novak started getting tummy upsets, for months he was on egg and potato (even chicken and rice went right though), temperature was up, three courses of antibiotics etc, couldn't keep kibble down at all, so I tried wet, ended up going 50/50 wet and dry. Then he started turning his nose up, so I rotated wets, same thing. I decided to ditch the kibble entirely, thing that really put me off dry was Bailey throwing up full, whole, completely undigested kibble 9 hours after eating it. Shocked me how hard it is for them to digest.

So I started throwing in a few raw meals and they always chased the bowl. So after thinking about it I decided to go raw. It just seemed like the natural progression for us. The dogs love it, it's cheaper and I can control exactly what they eat, so can know pretty much instantly what causes a tummy upset if they have one.

That's how I decided my dogs diet.

What's your food story?

__________________

I started with a decent kibble, the puppy version. Kilo then had a small problem related to him growing a little too rapidly - vet's notes said "got very big, very fast!". I was thinking about feeding raw and the vet discussed it with me - I researched it more before Kilo's check up a month later whilst switching to adult kibble the day after the initial vet visit.

At Kilo's check up I was still dithering slightly over raw; but that fantastic vet persuaded me to make the move and I did when he was about 7 months old.

I do not intend to feed anything but raw again either to Kilo or to any other dog. If I had to feed kibble again I wouldn't feed a life stage version.

__________________

When I first got Jed, we used to buy Bakers and Pedigree! He wasnt on that long before I read bad things about them and changed to Arden Grange. Flynn was brought up on Arden Grange too. Jed used to have the light version because he needed to lose weight and Flynn had the salmon and rice flavour due to his sensitive skin. Both dogs were on AG for a long time and I wasnt seeing any improvements in Jed's weight loss (he even went to the vets about it) or in Flynn's coat and skin condition. I was frustrated with having to buy 2 lots of expensive food and not getting results. I tried them on various foods - Flynn was on Nutro for a while and his coat got better but I was concerned about the claims being made about the ingredients (euthanised pets etc).
In the end I just put them on Chappie complete because the expensive foods werent working so I thought i'd give a cheap one a try. I have to say it ended up being the best dry food they'd ever been on. Energy levels were brilliant, Jed went from 30kg to 24kg and Flynn's skin/coat improved. My purse also thanked me for it!
At the same time i'd started taking an interest in raw feeding and on occasions would give my dogs some raw chicken or beef mince which they went mad for. My interest and keenness to feed this kind of diet, mainly due to Flynn's condition, rose but it wasnt practical at the time to switch over fully.
Anyway, when my situation changed I was able to switch them fully to raw and havent looked back.

__________________

When I got Ollie from his breeder, he was weaned onto Hills Puppy. I thought this was a good food at the time, so continued this until he was a year old. I then found out that Hills isn't a good food, so i changed him.

I changed him to James Wellbeloved because I also thought this to be good food. I fed this to him until he was around 2 years old. He produced very large poos on this food and in hindsight, it didn't suit him well.

I then changed him to Burns because I thought it was a good food (notice the pattern ). He was fed this as his main food until just last month. I am still using it as training treats to use up the bag. I personally think Burns has a high rice content, and I wanted to move onto a higher meat content food.

I have since changed him over to Natures Harvest wet food. He had always had dry food throughout his life, but upon researching, the only foods where the meat content was very high, they were always wet. I'd always fed dry because its claimed that dry keeps teeth clean and wet food is terrible for teeth. Ollie reached 3 years old and his teeth were dirty and caked in plaque, so that theory was out the window. I thought there's no harm in trying wet food, especially as the meat content in NH is so high (78% meat in both the Duck and the Tripe variety). Ollie loves it, even more than dry food and I think it suits him better than all of the foods he's had before. He'll be staying on this food for the forseenable future.

And I fixed Ollie's dirty teeth by giving him a Stagbar to chew. Its worked brilliantly. So he can have wet food but also have great teeth too.

__________________
I OWN A CHOCOLATE ROAN COCKER SPANIEL
RIP David xx Run free at the bridge. Love you always xx 19th February 2011
RIP Jack and Mickey xx Run free at the bridge. Love you forever xx 20th June 2011

Finlay was started on JWB from day one, then switched to fish4dogs and back again as he didn't get on well with the fish4dogs.

My ultimate plan is to get him on raw. But due to him being unwell and starting on medication, I want all that sorted before I switch him over completely. I feel that the need to switch to raw will be even more vital as the meds he is on can put a strain on the liver. So feeding a diet natural to him just makes sense. I do almost feel guilty for feeding kibble atm, as after much research I can see that their bodies aren't made to digest it. I will always attempt to have any dogs on raw and hopefully I'll have Finlay on raw before long.

__________________

Indi's food story.
We started off on royal canin when he came home, at first meals went down well and always on time then he salted skipping them and I was adding warm water making gravy with the biscuits (note horrid smells).

He then went 3 days without eating and my mil brought him a puppy pouch, by pedigree. I wasn't happy but I was desperate for him to eat so he had that.
The next day we were at pets at home for a nutrition consult with them. They introduced wainwrights trays and james well beloved kibble.

The trays were a mahoosive success. The kibble not so much... He would not even touch it.

Indi was on wainwrights for a while untill something changed and he was turning his nose up and missing meals.

So we tried nature diet. And we're still on it now after 6months.
I just had to admit he did not like kibble, as far as he is concerned its too boring. Personally I think he thinks all that crunching is too much like work

I would love to go down the raw route, but my oh is unbeleiveaby germ phobic so that's not happening anytime soon.

__________________

Jake (far right in my sig) got stomach cancer. He also had spinal cancer which is what alerted us to the problem, he kept falling over one day, having been fine the day before. He was PTS day three. The vet said stomach cancer is usually directly related to nutrition.

I did a heck of a lot of reading and decided raw was the way forward because I could see what the dogs were getting. The pups' breeder weaned them on Pedigree kibble, yuk. They would have eaten anything, but they now get a huge variety of raw, natural foods.

__________________

Transplanted Geordie
RIP Jake, my best dog. 10.8.10
RIP Boomerang, beautiful horse. 27.5.08

Thanks.

I love reading all the stories and seeing how everyone's opinions on food evolve.

I have a lot to thank the forum for, everything I've needed to know I've picked up in one form or another from here, be it from someone who has experience or someone pointing me in the right direction to look for the info I want.

Seems I'm not the only one who went from dry to wet to raw.

Am I the only one here who cringes every time they see someone in the pet shop grab a bag of bakers?

__________________

Well Harvey is my first ever dog, and i did a lot of reading into alsorts before getting him, but i new of raw feeding along time ago. I had already decided to feed raw before ever getting dog, so no general progression just straight there

__________________

Harvey - staffy
Chance - american bulldog (rescue)

19 snakes, 5 geckos, phibs, T's, inverts, fluffies and hedgehog.

When I got Louie just over a year ago he came to me on James Wellbeloved, which I changed to Orijen once he had settled as IMO its one of the best kibbles you can buy.

I then dabbled with a bit of raw, and for a while he was raw fed, but it proved too difficult with freezer space at my mums so we swopped back to kibble. I got made redundant so couldn't afford the Orijen anymore so I bought him the James Wellbeloved cereal free version which he had for a while, but he now has just the ordinary James Wellbeloved as I bought 12kg of it when it was on offer.

I'm not 100% happy with this arrangement, but the dog doesn't complain! I know JWB isn't great, but i'm happy to feed it for now knowing its better than alot of dog food out there.

When my living arrangements change my goal is to change him onto either Naturediet supplemented with raw bones for his teeth or a full raw diet if I can manage it, I may end up using pre-made and just supplementing with meaty bones

He only gets 100% natural treats im very careful about that, but right now he has to have the best I can afford. Hes happy and healthy and thats all that matters

__________________

Rabbit Retreat - Friendly Forum For Rabbit Lovers <<< Click Me