Please talk to me about dog food!

[BasilBuff]

We've recently got a ten-week-old Cavalier puppy. The breeder had her on a mostly grain-based dry food, plus some grain-free Butchers wet food which we've continued for the first two weeks (phasing out the dry food as I'm concerned about the grain and allergies, increasing the wet and introducing veg).

I'm keen that she has the most nutritious and appropriate diet for her health and breed, but I'm quite confused about the best thing to do. We'd assumed that raw food, plus veg, and maybe some scrambled eggs would be a good way to go, with a good variety of foods in her diet. However, the vet advised a dry food diet for teeth and solid poo (several friends feed their dogs exclusively on dry kibble too) and to limit variety completely so she isn't fussy (so feeding the same flavour/type of food three times a day).

I'm struggling to see how it's healthy for the dog to eat nothing but some dry kibble three times a day (it feels like feeding a child nothing but processed cereal), but I am a novice owner and would love advice on how we should be approaching this.

Any experience and advice very welcome!

@FangedFrisbee you're absolutely right, some brands of kibble are really poor. That's why it's important to stick to the WSAVA compliant brands.

There's some evidence a no grain and high legume based diet can cause heart issues

What DOES hel there is buying grain free food with the taurine supplemented back in.

Eden I think is as high a quality kibble as money can buy. Their semi-moist food is basically like training treats and irresistible, it scores hugely well on AADF and supplemental taurine. Absolutely brilliant food

I’m personally a bit sceptical of WSAVA as they are very heavily funded by hills/purina/royal Canin and they aren’t going to bite the hand that feeds…

We feed Naturo wet food as we can buy it from Wilkos or Tesco and it’s a really good price for a food that is rated very well on allaboutdogdood.com. We mix it with Wolfworthy kibble which is subscription based and again really highly rated and not megabucks. Must be doing something right as DDog is extremely fit and healthy.

Just coming on to add that if you feed kibble to small dogs, it's a good idea to weigh or measure it out every time. We feed freeze dried (a mix of Lukullus and Fish4Dogs) and the amount they need looks absolutely miniscule. It's very easy to overfeed if you don't measure it, and over time that's not good for them.

Definitely recommend looking on www.allaboutdogfood.com where you can find out info about nutritional content of all the various different dog foods and compare them. It also gives a breakdown of costs per day. We give our lab Orijen original which is one of the highest scoring of the dried kibble. We mix it with Forthglade wet food to add a bit of variety.

Sorry, the above link should be www.allaboutdogfood.co.uk

@FangedFrisbee - that's kind of my point, the vet just said 'dry food' no recommendation on type or quality or suitability for breed. Some posters are ticking me off for not listening to the breeder or vet, but neither has given considered, specific advice which is why I'm asking for views here. The kibble to breeder sent her home with was pretty crap from the ingredient list. The breeder has many years experience that's true, but the feeding advice she gave us was definitely old school (I refer again to giving the puppy a digestive for afternoon tea every day!)

Our cav is thriving on Butternut Box. He was on Fish4Dogs first from breeder, and then Akela which was a good quality kibble but still didn't quite agree with him. He developed doggy PICA where he was eating loads of random things (like my glasses twice!) and his poos weren't good at all and vet suggested nutritional deficiencies due to (lack of) absorption of food.

He's much better on butternut and enjoys it very much. His coat is lovely and shiny too.

Ddog is a mixed breed and according to her weight should eat a lot less than she does. If we don’t feed her enough in her opinion she makes herself hears very assertively, we’ve come to realise she definitely favours the lab part of the mix.

I completely agree! I mean, it’s basically an organisation funded by Nestle, Mars and the like to promote their products.

Surely they wouldn’t manipulate data to make their own ranges look better?!?😂

That was in response to @Lastqueenofscotland2 by the way!

Ours loves his kibble and we mix in a bit of raw from the butchers. Now he's older he has a variety of hits and bobs from us too when we're clearing up after meals - all selected and put in his bowl for his next meal rather than just throwing him everything all the time. He has sardines once a week and his coat is beautiful - he gets comments about his coat daily, literally.

For his first 12 months he very much had puppy tummy so we couldn't give him extras or veer off his kibble really because it just gave him the runs so be careful how much variety you're giving...

My 6 month old CKCS was fed Royal Canin Puppy Mini by my breeder but I gradually moved her onto Canagan Dental Small Breed with a bit of Forthglade wet trays and salmon oil mixed in. The Canagan biscuits are made with PlaqueOff. That's her evening meal anyway.

Up until she hit the 5 month mark she was a greedy little beast, I could get away with training her using her meal biscuits. Not anymore, when I walk her I have to take her biscuits with little cubes of JR Pet Products Pate and give her a bit of each. She totally refuses plain biscuits now.

For natural treats she has puffed chicken feet, Lamb Braids, Sprats, JR meat sticks, Fish skins, Rabbit ears and a Deer Leg. With things like the lamb braids, I always take them off her and throw them away when I think they are too small.

I'm not exaggerating when I say nearly every single person that strokes her on walks comments on how soft and shiny her coat is, she's Black and Tan. I've walked her to my vets every fortnight to weigh her and get her used to going into the waiting room and my if my vet sees her she always says she looks fantastic.

You will find out what they like-theyre like kids; what you want to feed them and what they'll actually eat are two different things! Our 2 year old Staffy loves scrambled egg and toast,Aldi wet food in gravy, veg- except peas- and his absolute favourite in the whole world is chicken!
Tried raw- nope
Tried dry- in small doses if added to wet or chicken
All the branded stuff-nope!
Used to eat fish- not anymore!
Tonight he's had a couple of spoons of Aldi tinned food, a scoop of dry, a spoonful of white rice and a cooked chicken thigh ( I buy a 2 kilo pack from Tesco every week). He scoffed the lot!
It's trial and error x

I think kibble can be sticky and clog up teeth. My dog also became vitamin b12 deficient on kibble.
Ddog fairly recently started having Butternut which my vet gives her own dog. I think she has been on it for about five or six months. It arrives frozen and so far she is doing well on it , the ingredients are good quality and she hasn’t had any digestive issues (prone to colitis) . The treats are good, the only ones she’s had that she can tolerate.

just seen that Mars have bought Orijen and Acana so I imagine they’ll be downgraded in the near future as ingredients likely to change.

The most common dietary allergen in the Northern Hemisphere is chicken and lamb in the southern hemisphere for dogs. Using exclusion diets and then dietary challenges grain is rarely found to be the problem.
Whether or not grain free is more likely to lead to dilated cardiomyopathy is not clear cut, but the most recent study which I have provided a link two has shown decreased systolic function and increased left ventricular volume in the dogs fed the non-traditional diet (grain free) the study received no funding from the pet food industry. The advice from the study was that dogs fed non traditional diet should be screened in a similar way to to at risk breeds following the Protect study to ensure early diagnosis of DCM.

Over the years I’ve tried various diets etc.i have shelties who don’t do at all well on anything with animal fat or things like chicken feet trachea etc.We use a good kibble and for our v old dog some wet food as she has hunger issues due to steroids she’s on.They also get healthy snacks through the day of raw carrots chopped up-the odd raw pepper-bits of apple.You won’t need to be feeding 3 times a day forever once the puppy growth is over.Just buy a good quality food and stick with it if it suits them.If you chop and change u may end up with a fussy dog.

My 2 chihuahuas & dachshund are on Eden kibble & lily's kitchen wet.

Their coats are lovely & shiny, good teeth etc

I've just started feeding my dog Marleybones. She loves is (gone in seconds!!) and it rates really highly on allaboutdogfood. If anyone wants to try, I have a 40% off code which is HI-HELEN15.

marleybones.com/

Thanks for the heads up, I’ll have to keep an eye on that.

Thanks for all the pointers everyone - I feel much more informed!