Puppy survival thread! All welcome!

[VanGoSunflowers]

Running on from our last one…

I won’t tag people because I will forget someone and then feel awful 😂

@VanGoSunflowers Poor Pablo. And you with the disturbed sleep. As long as he seems fine in himself, I wouldn't worry too much either as you know what has caused it.
If he gets subdued, won't eat breakfast and is hunched up or stretching/play bowing a lot, then I'd worry.

Thanks for the heads up @Nella68 & @Aubrielle & for the signs to watch out for @SpanielsGalore - he seems totally his normal
self this morning so I’m not concerned. I will keep an eye on him, I don’t know exactly how much of it he managed to snaffle before I dragged him away but it wasn’t much. Definitely not off his food but then, I think it would take something extremely bad to put this little pup off eating!

Often I find they may have an upset tummy whilst it passes through and then they bounce back to normal. I’d worry if not back to normal in 24 hours or blood/mucus in stools. My late female dog was a nightmare for eating all sorts of rubbish given the opportunity, partly due to the previous elderly couple who owned her for the first two years sharing everything with her including all types of take aways! She was also hideously overweight when we got her which is not good with a Bassets body shape. 🙄

@Houndymumma well I carried out one our favourite pastimes this morning and had a good look at all the poos! No blood or mucus or anything. They’re just very runny!

I had a dog with IBD. I had a folder on my phone containing over 50 photos of his poo. And then I'd post them in a FB group for analysis. 😁

@SpanielsGalore I applaud how fastidious you are! 👏 love it.

@VanGoSunflowers when M had bad diarrhoea (at 5 months) I got some probiotic paste from the vet which really helped.

Sounds like that unplanned chip stop is passing through ok. Wish people wouldn’t throw food down. Worse thing I had at a village fair was someone chucked down a sharp wooden skewer with bits of meat on it that were being sold by a food outlet. Thank goodness I managed to grab it out of my dog’s mouth before he swallowed the wooden skewer. He was only little at the time.

That stuff is really good. I had to occasionally use that with my late female rescue dog as she’d get an upset tummy as she had Addisons Disease as well as eating every bit of rubbish possible.

My older one found a discarded rotisserie chicken and had scoffed it bones and all when she was quite small before I'd even clocked what she'd found. I only knew what it was as she'd left the bag. Fortunately for me, she vomited it all up approx. 1 minute later so I'd barely had time to panic.

@Nella68 thats a good shout, thank you! One of the things that sold me on the Calibra food that @Aubrielle recommended is the pro biotics. I might pop in to the vet on my way to do the school run and ask.

@Houndymumma I agree! I wouldn’t mind but they were discarded right next to a bin! And they’re so bloody quick when they find food - of course as he saw I was running over to him and knew full well I was going to pull him away, he just ate even quicker! I turned around once and clocked him swallowing an entire fried egg whole that he had somehow managed to steal from my son’s plate. I have since ordered a very tall breakfast bar type table and stools to replace my current dining room table to stop that from happening again!
Glad you managed to stop the poor thing from swallowing the skewer!

@tizwozliz I have never seen food disappear so quickly as when as a Lab is on the case! I suppose it’s a good thing she threw the whole thing up?

You know gluten free bread is not up to much when the lab decides it's not worth eating after stealing a slice and just discards it in the garden instead 😂

We also had probiotic paste from the vet when Brie was about 6 or 7 months old. I blamed Wainwright's puppy food for making her loose and that was the point when I switched to feeding the Calibra Junior.

Haha! I had a similar type of thing with Pablo once - I use a barista machine at home for my coffee and I accidentally dropped part of the used coffee puck on the floor next to the bin - went to very quickly pick it up and out of his way (a lab puppy doesn’t need caffeine and I don’t think it would well tolerated!) before I had chance he had already sniffed it and walked away.

I was mildly offended because he will eat actual poo but turns his nose up at one of my favourite things 😂

I really do like the sound of that food. Looking forward to Pablo trying it and hopefully the small amount of chicken in it will be ok. I think it will, because he has little bits of fresh chicken now and then when I cook it and he tolerates that - I just think the chicken kibble was a bit too much!
I don’t know why it didn’t appear on AADF when I searched - I had spent hours looking for a promising sounding Kibble and that one does really tick all the boxes!
Still waiting to hear back from Millie’s but only emailed them yesterday so it’ll be interesting to see what they say. I read somewhere that the reason they don’t do a specific food for puppies is because it’s such high quality food anyway? Don’t know if that’s true.
It was also interesting to read @LandSharksAnonymous thoughts on the other thread about keeping them on puppy/junior food for as long as possible - for larger dogs that can be prone to joint issues. I’ve learnt so much from you lot!

Hope he’s OK now @VanGoSunflowers , I wouldn’t worry too much.

Billy once did something similar, the pub we cut through to get to the fields used to do takeaway roast dinners and the delivery driver must have dropped a full back of Yorkshire puddings in the dark. The next morning, Billy found them on our way out and I pulled him away but he remembered and on our way back ran off into the car park with me chasing him and snaffled the lot. He’d been planning that for the whole walk I’m sure of it!

I hope you won't be disappointed with the Calibra @VanGoSunflowers
I posted you a sample bag today, which is not great timing on my part, given that poor little Pablo has a dodgy tum 🙄 Obviously you'll want to keep him on his regular food for a few days at least. I've also sent you a small amount of Millies Wolfheart Countryside Mix for him to try, because that is definitely chicken free, whereas Calibra contains a small amount of poultry fat.

Calibra doesn't seem to come up on a lot of searches. Strangely nor does Essentials, which is very much on a par with Millies for quality of ingredients. There are some very good foods out there that seem to slip under the radar. Simpson's, which @Houndymumma is giving her pup, is another excellent option that gets eclipsed by other brands.

It's been interesting trying out different brands and using my girl as official food taster. She has definite preferences, so it's been an expensive learning curve (with two tummy upsets), but we finally got there and she's looking good on it.

It's funny because I would have discounted essentials for my first as the large breed puppy/junior food only comes in one flavour and miss fussy pants would never eat the same flavour for long.

I think I first heard about it from someone on one of the puppy threads here. We moved mainly as a particularly fussy period at about a year old coincided with a trip to Denmark and can get it in pet shops over there. So it was as much convenience as detailed to research!

I agree about Essentials @tizwozliz , the puppy one wasn't what I wanted either. So far we've only tried the Estate one, because PMD do well on lamb and most of the others contain fish. It's a good food though, she likes it.

@VanGoSunflowers I see your chips and raise you a massive bunch of grapes that someone had dropped on the park this evening 😡. Fortunately, I saw them before Rory did and was able to call him away before he noticed or I’m sure he’d have snaffled them.

@Idstillratherbepaddleboarding Funny how they remember the exact spot they found a food source. 😂
It's a good job you saw the grapes before Rory. That could have been very dangerous!

@VanGoSunflowers How's Pablo now? All pooped out?

Well spotted on the grapes, definitely not good! 😬

My old girl once ate a KFC bucket full of leftovers in a hedge. It was the crunching that alerted me. There were literally no ill effects and she checked out that hedge every time we went down there. The remains of a kebab was another one. She even ate the whole green chilli that no one ever eats. No effect on her whatsoever!

She never ate poo though, which Merry seems to be developing a taste for. It’s freaking me out a bit…

@SpanielsGalore yes - thank you - I think he got the last of it out of his system just before lunch! Has been eating, drinking a just pupper-ing as normal so no concerns 😊

@Struckbylightning ah, I sympathise! I thought I had cracked the poo eating thing after switching his food but alas, I now think I was a fluke. Or lack of available excrement to feed his habit as he was back on it earlier 🤢