Dog food - Page 2

roborob, A raw diet can consist of many different things. The important thing to remember is NEVER EVER cook ANY bones. If you cook them they will easily splinter and can cause internal bleeding. Raw bones are perfectly fine and and are infact recommended to help keep their teeth clean and healthy. Puppies are fed 3 times a day about 5-10% of thier body weight while adults are fed once a day 2-3% of desired weight. Every dog is different so it will differ between dog to dog, if you dog is over weight reduce his meals, if he is to thin add a chicken leg to each meal until he is back at his regular weight. As for the actual things you feed, it can be anything from chicken(necks,backs,leg quaters), turkey(ground), pork, beef, lamb, fish(can get canned sardines or mackerel), rabbit, goat, duck, venison, bison, tripe, liver, kidneys, hearts, gizzards, eggs(with or without shell), and anything else you can think of. They should be given salmon oil every day for Vitamin E. You can also give them like 1/4 cup of veggies 3 times a week, either raw or steamed. Some people like to fast their dogs(one day) once a week or so because it cleans out their system. I personally fast mine about twice a month. Dogs like a variety just like humans do. You can change what you give them every couple days or so. Dont worry about every meal being balanced, it will eventually even itself out. There are probably 15-20 books on the "BARF" diet, you can either read one or I just looked at some info online for free. Do some reasearch before swiching and it never hurts to learn something new :). Hope this does some help, Andrea

Same as gsdlvr2. We have been through many tough trials of foods but Royal Canin Maxi and Puppy do great! Several breeders in Germany that we know also use Royal Canin.

animules: We are all aware of why you are making the comment about Eukanuba. Eukanuba is by far the most used dog food in Europe because of its excellent quality. With the BARF and raw diet fad created on the American continent, Eukanuba went under attack by the same groups who started to promote the new diet fad, a very dangerous fad. The original plan by these groups to spread the mad cow disease throughout the world failed just short of poisoning our dogs. The plan is still the goal. Beware of it! Do not feed raw! Raw diets were excellent for many decades, but it is dangerous to feed raw in our century.

Roborob, Their are many excellent dog/puppy foods out there. As a rule I would stay away from supermarket and pep store foods, but this is just a generalization. Grange/feed stores carry the best selections of good quality foods. Years ago Iams,Eukanuba,Science diet were the best on the market, and before them Purina was about the best, but my understanding is that the quality many of these went down hill after being purchase by the big folks like Proctor and Gamble. I like to give raw meet peiodically and as Bob O mentioned Look at the puppies condition more then the package recomendations. What they recomend has always been to much for mine, though someone else may have the opposite problem. If you give raw meat in addition, do not cook and especially do not cook bones. Dogs do not digest cooked bones well. One thing I strongly recommend is that I try to get them started on dry without doctoring it up. I can't stand picky eaters, so I try to avoid giving too much real tasty stuff until some good eating habits are formed. Hope this helps.

For what it is worth, I personally feed my own 25 GSDs and rescues, as well as all clients being boarded, Royal Canin food. They are excellent foods, including the Maxi GSD 24 variety. However, the post above saying the Pro Line from RC is the same is in error. It is cheaper, but it is NOT the same food at all. I always recommend Royal Canin, but there are other excellent kibbles on the market today, including Breeders' Choice, Wellness, Solid Gold and a few others.

Eaglepack. Search the message board for additional threads regarding this food. Or check out their website. I have posted info before on what and how to feed it from pup to adult. There has been lots of positive feedback from people who have tried it after my recommendation. Usually people who try it stick with it. I have tried many other brands of food, including the ones mentioned here, but Eaglepack is still the one that IMO outperforms many others. Not keen on raw for puppies. Too much can go wrong unless you have trained yourself to be a nutritional expert. We will not guarantee pups that will be fed raw unless a person can prove they are such an expert. Most are not. And even most ready made formulas out there that people can buy in a pet shop freezer for example are not balanced properly for a growing GSD pup. Many of these company sprout up and disappear again quickly. For a reason. A puppy is not the one to experiment with if you are new to feeding raw. If you must, try it once the puppy is done growing and hips and elbows have been certified. JMO. The biggest problem is getting the calcium:phosohorous ratio right for a growing pup. Feeding liver and other organ meats which are high in phosphorous can throw off that balance very quickly. The results can be disasterous. Raw fish also brings a host of problems, never feed Pacific Salmon raw, and beware of parasites in other fish as well. Salmonella can affect dogs too and is particularly problematic in pups and older dogs. In Europe do not feed any raw pig products. If they are affected by Aujeszky’s Disease (not present in Canada, rare in the US), it can kill your dog rapidly and there is no cure. I have tried raw in adult dogs and really did not see much of a difference or added benefit from it in the dogs. Other than that is was a rather messy way of feeding and rather inconvenient, from storage to thawing time to clean up and smelly garbage from the used containers the food came in. It is also virtually impossible to travel with. Too high of a bone content makes the dogs constipated, and the wrong type of raw whole bones have led to molar fractures, which are a bitch to fix or pull. I do give a raw bone once a week to clean teeth. Either beef or buffalo. Preferrably from a joint with tendon and some meat attached to it and does not have too much marrow but also does not have any small fragments that can be swallowed whole, and takes a GSD about 2 hours to clean of all the surrounding tissue including some of the softer bone material that can be rasped off, not bitten off. That bone is then discarded as soon as the dog is finished with it and replaces an evening meal. Teething pups can have a frozen chicken or turkey back (remove some of the excess fat before freezing). It has lots of cartilage, the bones are very soft and cannot splinter.

Please, hodie, educate me on how the Royal Canin Pro line differs from the original Royal Canin line.

Just want to say thank you to everone who offered help with the "dog food" questions I had...It does seem that there is some difference of opinion here amongst everyone out there with more experience than I...To each there own but you have given me enough information to know what I will do...I appreciate your interest, so far all of you have been very helpful in helping me to make the right decisions... Thanks and I'm sure I'll be back with more questions as they come up... Rob mrarebe@netscape.net

Wagonmaster, I just called Royal Canin. Indeed, it does look now that they have a program which uses the same formula in larger bags in their PRO line. This started in August. I was not told about this. I am looking into it more because if this is true, it will save me a lot of money. I buy more than 35 bags of RC MAXI GSD 24 each month.......and those bags are 35lbs. So it appears that you may be correct. They should be sending me the product brochures soon. The last time I asked for a bag of the PRO line, they sent the large breed formula, which at that time, was the only large breed and non-breed specific food they had. It is full of corn and I would not feed it. So it appears you may be correct and I am incorrect with out to date information, even though I buy $10,000 worth of their food to feed annually. There is a program qualification which most people probably cannot meet, but I can and will likely change then to the PRO line if this is all correct and indeed it is the same food. The reason so many GSDs seem to do well on Eagle Pack is that so many of them have subclinical cases of pancreatic or other malabsorption problems. Eagle Pack is filled with enzymes. So it can hide the fact that a given dog may have a problem illustrated by soft, light colored stool.

I spoke with Royal Canin about the PRO line some time ago as it is similar to the AGR formula. It is corn based they told me so I don't use it.