Changing food - what to do?

[PugInTheHouse]

I thought it would be better to start a new post rather than full up the Puppy survival thread. Also may be useful for others in a similar situation.

I was using Wainwright's mixture of dry and wet food. Was ok, pup liked it but it didn't really agree with his tummy and also the feeding guides are not particularly good so I think he was eating too much. Weight wise he looks ok compared to the guides but vet said top end of ok and could do with dropping a kilo as ribs starting to be less easy to feel than at last vets visit.

Bought some of the vets dry food, transitioned over 5 days (vet gave no guidance but just said mix a small amount in and increase daily which I did). He seemed to eat it ok mixed in, day 5 had all the new food and was ok. Day 6 same but was sick in the evening. The only good thing was that the new stuff stopped him having dodgy poos and also he stopped having wind like he did before.

Since then he won't eat the vets food at all though. I went back to mixing in the old food and he will eat that but spits out the new stuff. However his tummy is back to being not good.

I have bought some Royal Canin breed specific to see if that's any better, on advice I have put in 2 separate bowls , tiny bit of new stuff in one, normal amount of the vets food. He will now only eat the new stuff, this morning he went to the old food but spat it out and barked at it. He's hardly eaten anything as outright refuses the vets stuff.

I am not sure what to do, hes had 15g of dry food last night and again this morning. He's hungry as he keeps going over to his bowl and sniffing it but won't eat it. He also keep going over to the new bowl and licking it so it seems he is looking for more of that.

I guess there could be something else going on and he is ill rather than its the food, but the fact he is well in himself and will eat other stuff suggests that's not the case.

Sorry this is long but I thought I should explain properly to help get the correct advice.

We had to use probiotic first week after 2nd jabs as he ate so much off the floor it seems to sort him out and after that he seemed to cope better with all the leaves, twigs and god knows what else he ate. He is much better now but those on the puppy survival thread will have read about the caterpillar he ate which stung his throat and the panics I had over the snails!

There are also so many differing views on it all!
Dogs are scavengers who will eat any old crap (literally, if they get the chance). Provided a food is nutritionally balanced and suits the dog, it's fine. Whether it's excellent or not is another matter, but plenty of dogs live long lives on mid-range kibble.

There's a cold-pressed food called Gentle which is very good as well. I'd probably feed it to mine if it was cheaper and they were smaller.

We had a nightmare with food.

He isn't good orientated, very picky and will go for days turning his nose up if he doesn't like something.

He has a stomach problem so those early days just about everything disagreed with him.

I used allaboutdogfood.co.uk to get an idea of quality and cost. Picked a few and tried them out. When I found one that he liked I reduced it a bit and mixed in the old stuff to try and use it up.

We mainly feed cooked and wet food because kibble is kind of boring for my dog and seems harder on the stomach to digest.

Sometimes it is trial and error to get a food they like and suits them.

'He isn't food orientated'

There’s a poster on here who is very critical of the allaboutdogfood site, saying the founder only has a degree in zoology rather than animal nutrition. That led me to try to do some research to see the credentials that lead the site to be competent to recommend dog food but I couldn’t find it - can anyone link?
Anyway my pup arrived on RC with v dry skin so I tried changing her to Acana but she really didn’t like it. I added some James well beloved wet food which helped a bit but we’re now in the process of changing her to James well beloved grain free fish topped with a dab of wet food which she is loving. I wanted to change to Orijen but it’s made by the same people as acana so was scared she wouldn’t like it, but a friend just told me her dog hated acana but loves Orijen. Anyway, as my puppy is now on her third food, like yours, I’m just going to stick with what we have now. I’m not so sure that grain free isn’t an expensive fad but she’s loving it and as she’s a bit underweight that’s the most important. If I were you I would just feed the RC (it’s hardly Bakers) til she’s an adult and then change then if you want. I have young children in the house so wouldn’t consider raw for hygiene reasons.

@BiteyShark I will definitely try a few. He generally is food orientated so I definitely know he doesnt like it. He will happily eat cardboard, hair, fluff though

@Puppalicious thanks, there are a few posts i have seen that are very critical in general of the snobbery over food, I do want my puppy to have the best for him though but essentially he has to eat something.

I feed my dog lillys kitchen which he seems to like , no idea how good or bad is it is in comparison , I assume mid range
If I can't get lilys kitchen I give harringtons which I think is considered not so good
But I feed him what he likes and he his healthy , good skin and coat , ideal weight etc
My old dogs their was none of this bad food known about and they ate whatever I picked up, we lost them 6 years ago and 15 & 14.5 and until final illness they went to vets rarely so It can't of been so bad ? but they did deficate a lot so now I know a bit more I went for better so less in less out as such and my dog is 5 and doing well so I take it his food is ok .
My friends dog will only eat a cheap pets at home brand , they can get her to eat nothing else

[quote PugInTheHouse]@Puppalicious thanks, there are a few posts i have seen that are very critical in general of the snobbery over food, I do want my puppy to have the best for him though but essentially he has to eat something.[/quote]
I prefer the ingredients of dog food to read like, well ingredients, lol

So for instance royal canin I’m not hugely impressed with because it’s lots of processed bits of stuff, it’s not awful like some foods or anything, but you can get similar quality ingredients for a lot less money, which is my issue with it.

It’s basically a mid range list of ingredients at a premium price.

Having said that, I fed one of my cats it for years, because she had health issues and it was the only food she consistently ate well...

So, yeah sometimes other things affect what you use.

I definitely want to get something better for the price it is but if he eats it with no issues and no dodgy tummy I will give it a little while then test him with some other foods.

Thanks all, I definitely feel better about how to sort it going forward. I will do a lot more research first, I think I jumped straight at the RC stuff as it does a breed specific one so didn't think much else about it.

@tabulahrasa I wasn't referring to anyone on this thread re the snobbery at all in case it read that way. Just on here in general and it always seems to be such a contentious subject. I stupidly didnt really look at the RC ingredients as I had always thought of it as a high quality brand so it was a hit misleading.

[quote PugInTheHouse]@tabulahrasa I wasn't referring to anyone on this thread re the snobbery at all in case it read that way. Just on here in general and it always seems to be such a contentious subject. I stupidly didnt really look at the RC ingredients as I had always thought of it as a high quality brand so it was a hit misleading.[/quote]
Oh no, I didn’t think you were, I was just saying... that’s how I tend to pick pet food, look at the ingredients and go, yep, sounds like food, that’ll do me, lol.

And yeah, that’s what annoys me about RC, they price themselves and market themselves as quality food, but it’s not, they’re just conning people basically.

I will definitely do more of that going forward re ingredients. Hopefully he'll get on ok with the RC for now and I can relax for a bit lol.

@PugInTheHouse we had terrible problems with Happy having bad tummies and not settling on food. We tried the RC cocker puppy and it was the only food that stopped his diarrhoea and his vomiting. I know it doesn't feature high on the all about dog food website but we needed to stop his very frequent gastric problems and this was the only food that worked and that he was happy eating. I actually think the higher quality stuff really upset his tummy.

He has the RC stuff as main food and can tolerate the Millie's wolf heart kibble as treats so we're mixing his kibble now to move to Millie's if his tummy can cope.

I do agree that when they have bad tums you really just need to get them to eat something that isn't causing diarrhoea or vomiting first. Once they settle, you can always try and introduce something better at a later stage. He's been on it since he was about 3 months now!

I found it really really stressful at the time so have huge sympathies. There's something quite upsetting about knowing the food is making them ill and not being able to fix it so I would do what works for now!

Thanks @HappyThursdays that's really good to know. Today he has had mainly the RC stuff so will see how he goes. He wolfed down his dinner so that's good compared to the last few days.