To want some genuine proof that Bakers Complete dog foods are the work of the devil?

[Jolleigh]

We've recently admitted defeat and acknowledged that we have an extremely picky dog who has, for the year we've had him, lost about a kilo since we rescued him.

He'll eat wet food without issue, but that's the expensive option and not good for his teeth. He also digests it far too quickly and ends up over eating if we keep him on that exclusively.

Most dry complete dog foods he won't touch unless he's really extremely hungry...he doesn't like anything that's too dry.

We tried him on quite a few different dry foods on the vet's advice, but a year later he's no better.

We've tried adding mixers and doggy gravies...he licks the bits he likes and leaves the rest.

We were in a tight spot as far as dog food is concerned recently and ended up having no choice but buying a Bakers Meaty Chunks complete food.

He loves it. He's eating better and is much brighter. Lovely coat.

But I've heard so many bad things about Bakers, I'm nervous to keep him on it. I can't find any actual evidence behind the word of mouth though

You could always try giving them leftovers from meals like roast dinner, sheppards pie, cottage pie, casarole etc as a better alternative to bakers :-)

If he's eating and happy, why not give yourself a break and let him eat it.
Best that we save our middle class angst for Turkey twizzlers.

Love this comment. Please don't keep yourself awake fretting that you are feeding your obviously loved and cared for dog a food he enjoys and is thriving on.

Our dog always has Wagg complete food but if we have ever run out and had to grab a box of bakers from the local shop it sends him crazy. He is 12 and normally a very docile dog but not when he's had bakers. I can only put it down to the colours

@ westie!!

Yy to naturediet. If you buy online in bulk it costs 72p per tray. My pug has one a day, as would your jrt. I don't think 72p a day is too much for a very high quality food. Or you can buy it 99p in pets at home

Didn't expect so many responses! I'm on my phone so will take them 1 by 1...

LackingEnergy - we did try to feed raw but it doesn't seem to agree with him...the speed it goes through is quite spectacular and we end up picking up partly digested food when we're out on walkies. Tried for 2 weeks but it didn't get better The vet reckons he's got a sensitive stomach. We then moved him onto a dry food for dogs with sensitive stomachs which I used to feed my husky and he wouldn't touch it. Tried a few more and got more of the same...

HeadsDown - we did try stock but he'd back off once he felt a crunchy bit. He'd eat it all the way through if we completely soaked it...but that doesn't do much for his teeth! And we found again, once it was properly wet he was hungry much quicker.

noddingoff - I really appreciate your input...it's definitely a comfort knowing it's probably not doing harm.

Stupid question but have you checked his teeth? My dog has always had dry food but in the last 2-3 years he goes through phases of not wanting to eat any dried food. Wet food, meat, rice no problem but he won't touch biscuits. We had his teeth cleaned and he started eating dry food again quite happily but after about 5-6mths, he'd stop eating the biscuits.. it turns out that although his teeth are clean (acc to the vet), he keeps getting a low level infection in his gum and that's causing just enough discomfort for him to not want to eat hard food. Antibiotics (& another teeth clean the next time it flares up) sorts the problem out.

Another thought.... the same dog hates being left alone to eat his food - someone has to be within the same room as him while he eats otherwise he leaves it! I have a friend whose dog does the same thing! Have you tried staying with him (I busy myself by clearing up/making tea etc) or leaving him etc?

My dog eats Skinners Maintenance. Our dog trainer told me that any dried dog food with over 17% protein in is like giving your dog a litre of coke a day! SM has 18%!

Bakers is crap. Looking at the ingredients- if it says meat and animal derivatives it means not only can it be any part of the animal (chicken- head, beak, feet, skin, bones) etc but also can be another type of meat (pork etc). Because of this the recipe changes every bag dependent on what the manufacturer has at the time, hence minimum 4% meat.

The meat content could sometimes be higher but with the crap they add its likely to be very poor quality. Compare to brands like Jwb/ wainwrights where the content is 25-30.

When people come to work complaining of their dogs behaviour you can often guarantee they say they're on bakers or pedigree, the majority change and see a huge improvement. Like giving blue smarties to kids!

My dog has Arden Grange. Does this cause hyperactivity or is it just because he's a spaniel?

I'm spending £50 on Likys Kitchen organic dry food and my dogs seem to love it. One has a sensitive stomach and tends to crap for Britain on almost anything else. The other is an old girl who is happy on anything. It is all organic and tbh from the ingredients list I would feed it to my kids. If you have unlimited cash you could try that (I get it from ocado but I suspect you could find it more cheaply online)... Otherwise they get meaty bones most weeks and that's it.

Otherwise I think if he is happy and healthy on Bakers... Keep him on bakers!

Another westie owner here. Bob was on bakers for a while, he had itchy skin and constant problems with a gooey ear.
Changed him over to arden grange. Change s obvious 2 weeks later, skin had improved and no more ear issues. It also seemed to perk him up a bit.

From experience alone I wouldn't use it.

at Bamboozled

Hi Daisy - our first thought was teeth! The vet took a look and there's nothing obviously wrong. We've got our eyes on it going forward. I'd have thought he'd turn his nose up at Bakers if it was a pain issue though.

Baldrick is the opposite of the dog you describe...he wants privacy when it goes in as well as when it comes out!

Bramley - my understanding is that dogs need much less protein than people seem to think! And though meat protein is ideal, other sources will do the job. Too much protein often causes behaviour issues.

Had my Staffy on Bakers. Never again!
Severe allergic reaction to the cereals and a protein/E number, ear infections and sugar rushes/crashes.

Took us a while to find a decent food as the awkward dog is also allergic to Brewer's yeast which we've found in most brands that claim to be sensitive or hypoallergenic.

Both fat mutts are now on this. No cereals, no bad stuff and a decent meat to veg ration (and a damn sight cheaper than Orijin.)

No scientific study, but a large number of the epileptic dogs I see are feed Bakers we change their food to something like Arden Grange and the seizures get less.
I always wonder why you feed a colour blind animal coloured food.
Finally whilst Bakers is cheaper per bag you have to feed a lot more of it so the cost per day comparing it to the higher quality foods is the same.
I wouldn't feed my child McDonalds every day so I don't feed my dog Bakers.

Jolleigh....That's what I was trying to say!!!

Meant to add that a few weeks ago at a dog show my dog was given a free sample of another dried food (not BC but can't remember what!) My dog had it on Sat night and Sun morning and on Monday I couldn't do a thing with him. He was absolutely loopy! Like a hyperactive child........... Lesson learnt!!

Skinners working dog Salmon/Rice or Duck/Rice is good and not expensive. Mine dogs are on CSJ at the moment, another working dog food, and it seems to suit them - glossy coats, firm poo, waggy tails while eating.

E320 - has been found to be tumour-producing when fed to rats. In human studies it has been linked with urticaria, angioedema and asthma.

E321 - BANNED for use in food in Japan, Romania, Sweden, and Australia. The US has BANNED it from being used in infant foods. So bad McNasty's have voluntarily eliminated it from their products.

E310 - BANNED from children's foods in the US because it is thought to cause the blood disorder methemoglobinemia

E172 - BANNED in Germany

E132 - Can cause skin sensitivity, a rash similar to nettle rash, itching, nausea, high blood pressure and breathing problems. One of the colours that the Hyperactive Children's Support Group recommends be eliminated from the diet of children. PROHIBITED in Norway.

E102 - TARTRAZINE -A trial on 76 children diagnosed as hyperactive, showed that tartrazine provoked abnormal behaviour patterns in 79% of them

E110 - Sunset Yellow (E110) has been found to damage kidneys and adrenals when fed to laboratory rats. It has also been found to be carcinogenic when fed to animals

E104 - One of the colours that the Hyperactive Children's Support Group recommends be eliminated from the diet of children. BANNED in Australia, Japan, Norway and the United States.

E171 - BANNED in Germany

E153 -BANNED as a food additive in the United States of America. Suspected as a carcinogenic agent.

That's all on top of the fact that the ingredient list doesn't contain any actual ingredients, just things like meat and animal derivatives and vegetable protein...no mention of which meat or vegetables, so basically whatever they could shove in this batch this time cheapest, added sugar and given that dogs would appear to be colour blind, what is the point of the colourants anyway?

I think if he is happy on it, no health issues and doing OK behaviour wise then leave him to it!

We've always had dogs and before the internet they were fed a mix of dried food (the old fashioned kind that looked like rabbit food), chappie out of tins, pedigree chum if we were feeling flush, those vile sausage meat things, raw meat, cooked meat and table scraps.

All our dogs lived to old age (think the little yorkie my ma had was 18!), with minimal health problems. Including the mongrel we had who in his lifetime had both parvo and distemper (back in the day when only pedigree's were vacinated), was hit by a bus and had life threatening injuries that were so complex the vet treated him for free in exchange for writing a paper about him, being locked in an empty house for nearly a fortnight before being found and various other disasters. He also lived until he was 16/17 and other than the stuff that happened to him was quite healthy.

I feed my whippet a combination of whichever dried food is on offer from the more expensive ranges as she gets bored with the same thing constantly and table scraps. She will eat most things that come of our plate and to be honest her diet is mainly left overs. She will only pick at the dried stuff if nothing else is available. She looks fab. Teeth and coat and weight all fine, fit and well and rarely has loose poo. But some would judge me for allowing her to have table scraps and say she should just be on dog food.

I'd rather have a happy content dog eating bakers than a hungry lacklustre dog who didn't eat anything!

My parents dog was put down last month at 14 having eaten bakers every day of his life. He was the healthiest, calmest, most amenable dog you could ever have met.

I have a Springer and on the odd occasion we've run out of his usual food and had to grab some from the local Co-op, who only sell Bakers, he's even more batshit than he usually is. Once he's back on his usual food he's fine

However, if he has a sensitive stomach, is one of the few things he'll eat, is happy, healthy and thriving, I'd stick with it.

We use a mix of wet pouches and dry mixer, ours picks out all the meat first but will eventually go and eat the mixer when he realises all the cute dog faces in the world isn't going to get him another pouch.