What to feed my 7yr old whippet

[mortil2]

Just that really. We have tried a few different feeds. At the moment she is on wet food, but I would really like her to go on to more dry or semi-dry feeds. In the past I have tried a couple of different brands, but have found that it often swells up so much inside her and upset her stomach. As she is also no longer a young girl and is starting to get stiff legs at times, I was wondering if there is a special 'senior' type food that she would benefit from

Aviod anything with wheat in it, have you tried raw?....I know you said you'd prefer drier food but give it a go, the results might just change your mind.

Thanks sconess. I haven't tried raw as I have limited freezer space. I take it that is what you use? How much do you have to order at a time?

Yes I have fed my whippet on raw from 8 weeks. We bought a mini freezer to hold his food. You can buy online or in places like petsathome. Or some butchers can help. We tend to buy 3 bags of minced meat of various types, always a bit of tripe which contains lots of good bacteria for the gut and then I give him chicken wings and lamb bones to chew on. Also sardines in olive oil and raw eggs.

I really just don't like processed foods, aviod them for myself and the family so never felt very happy about giving them to my dog.

sconess I think I will give raw a try, but I will have to look into it in more detail to make sure I give her the right mix of nutrients. Have you noticed a difference in your dog?

We have always fed him raw, he has no health problems as yet but lots of people report the difference in their dog when they change to raw feeding especially when a dog has digestive issues. There's a good Facebook group Raw feeding UK they are full of useful advice.

Thanks for all your advice, will look at the fb raw feeding group

If you don't get on with raw feeding we've used James Well beloved dry food for our terrier since he was about 1. Tried several different foods when he was a pup and he had upset stomach but has always been ok with this one. We did accidentally buy the senior version last year though and it must have been too rich for him as it did upset him (he's 7), but we went back to the normal one and he was ok again. I think the standard one is rice based with no wheat and there's one in a green foil bag which I think is vegetables but no rice, but you'd better double check before you buy it.
Good luck

Acana is probably the best quality commercial dry food you can buy. Spendy, but then a whippet doesn't eat much. There are risks in feeding raw meat as well as the likelihood of the diet being unbalanced unless you are very careful.

www.capcvet.org/capc-recommendations/canine-neosporosis/

I think that the risks of feeding an unbalanced diet are greatly exaggerated by the dog food companies. We seem completely obsessed with giving our dogs a balanced diet via processed food but we don't feel the seem way about our kids - we don't assumed jars of baby food give them better nutritionthan home made, we don't assume food manufacturers know more or produce better food. When I look at the ingredient list in pet processed food I do not see good quality nutritious food, I see food with artificial nutrients that is produced to be convenient, cheap and have a long sell by date and I am not interested in any of those qualities.

I think that the main reason for the unbalanced mantra is that once people find a way of feeding their dog that appeals to them and to them dog, they tend to do the same thing every day. So if there is, say, very little calcium in the food, the usual disastrous flaw in the homemade diet, this becomes a huge problem. Of course homemade food, if you can find a few great recommended recipes and stick to them, is of better quality than the scrapings off the factory floor that are shovelled into most commercial petfoods, especially the supermarket ones. Hence if you want real quality, Acana and similar brands are far preferable.

Thank you villain and cheeseEater its such a big market out there. It definitely seem sensible to choose a wheat free product. I really appreciate all of your input

My three whippets (and my sort-of-whippety cross) are all on Millie's Wolfheart plus Wainwright's grain free wet as a topper, and are doing brilliantly on it.

MWH is all entirely grain free and comes in various formulations. My whippets are on the countryside mix as it seems to suit them the best.

SmartAlec thank you
I have left a message on their website to see if they do trial sizes. Do you feed your dogs twice a day?

I know they do 200g size bags that I think are around £1.50-£2.00 depending on which formulation it is.

Mine are fed twice a day, just dry in the morning and then dry with a single tray of WW shared between all four as a topper. They also sometimes get raw eggs, tinned pilchards or dog appropriate leftovers from our meals instead of the wet food.

My lurcher has a delicate stomach and we use JWB lamb and rice. She can't have the turkey version though - that's disastrous. Small terrier that joined us, allegedly with a delicate stomach switched quickly to JWB and does very well on it.