What do you feed your dogs?

Anyone I know on this board mostly feeds a good quality dog food and they are careful as to what other food they give.

My dogs are on James Wellbeloved. I have one who gets skin irritations and the other who could possibly eat anything and nothing would happen so two ends of the spectrum. I can tell by their pooh if something isn't right!

I am just wondering what everyone else feeds their pooches.

What treats do you give?
Do you feed human food and if so what?
Do you feed BARF? This is meant to be superior to any other feeding method and a friend feeds BARF to her working dogs and their condition is second to none.

I was speaking with a vet recently who told me that chicken has now been added to the list of food intolerances because many dogs are getting too much of it. In commercial foods poultry is thrown in because it is cheap and bulks food out.

My favourite food for my dogs is the Ocean Cod variety of James Wellbeloved it makes their coat shine and they LOVE it. Also the lamb flavour smells like LAMB.

As regards food intolerances I think a dog can eat a lot of a food that they are intolerant to and when it builds up they go down like a ton of bricks so I am very interested in this topic.

Also food and diet have a direct link to behaviour. If anyone has any comments on that post them here too.

I am getting hungry writing this..off for some lunch :lol:

Tara

I feed eagle pack holistic lamb and rice, as I know what I am getting (according to articles read). It is a human grade and very reasonably priced for its ingredients.
I also give fish oil and feed human fruit and veg, sardines and raw lamb meat on occasion.
My dogs are sensitive to corn and beef with regards to food intolerence.

I like timberwolf-- merrick--- canidae they get home cooked -- satin balls, fresh fruit and vegies-- for treats they have Merrick pork bits, and dehydrated chicken. They have a lot of variety and none seem sensitive to changes of foods.

I tried only BARF for a while but found it too awkward and didn't see any significant difference in looks, stools etc.

Now I use a base kibble, James Wellbeloved right now but also sometimes Royal Canin; curious to try Burns sometimes to see how the dogs do on it.

Some days I feed kibble or else generally a homecooked stew; sometimes over kibble. I'd rarely feed kibble alone; usually add something be it the stew, leftovers, fish, egg, yoghurt, veggies, fruit etc. Or a mix of some of those. Also regularly give raw chicken necks and sometimes wings, cut into three pieces, but wonder on and off about the bones... pros and cons. :|

The boys have no food problems but Lily does -- seems to have some things she cannot tolerate including certain kinds of treats. I wonder if her recent bout of gastro problems with bleeding might be due to some intolerance issue but for now it has settled. She will eat absolutely anything she gets hold of so it is hard to know what might have gone in. :shock:

For treats: fruit and raw veggies; various commercial dog treats, dried tripe, pizzle sticks...I've made treat biscuits for the dogs and they really loved those. Favourite treat is definitely dried tripe.

I feed my two dogs California Natural lamb and rice, they're doing really good on it, Bentley is sort of prone to soft stools so I'm always trying to firm up his poo, and he's done well on chicken meal and rice (Eagle Pack) and lamb and rice (California Natural). Only human food they get is a bit of crust from my toast in the morning. I also will add a bit of canned California Natural to their kibble.

Oh, almost forgot the treats....I give them the California Natural dog biscuits, they go nuts over them!

Ellie eats Nature's Variety Raw Instincts Kibble and Health Pet's Raw Meat. She is on the raw food diet. Her breeder is very meticulous about this so we have a scale and we weigh her food every morning She gets 5/8 of the Nature's Variety and the rest (up to 3 1/2 lbs) in the raw food.

I tried the Innova puppy and she had loose stools. I added half Canidae and it improved. Finally went all Canidae since she was 3 mths and its an all stages and now her stools are perfect. I add a rounded tsp of merricks puppy plate (its good nutrition and she wont eat just plain kibble as she was raised on a homecooked diet at breeders so is used to moisture).

She gets one cube of pumpkin a day. Sometimes gobbles it, others ignores it. I alternate with what I toss in to kibble between plain yogurt (1/4 tsp), chicken, frozen green beans, shredded carrot, tuna
.
Training treats are chicken, cheese, frozen green beans (she thinks they are chocolate!) cheerios and Charlie Bears.

Snacks Wellness cookies - not every day usually on a low training day when she hasnt had much extras.

When I make my daugthers smoothie breakfast I give her a pinch of a strawberry or banana, she sits by the blender very straight and alert waiting for her little speck :lol:

Not for nutrition but for coat I started her on Dr. Maggie supplement which is omega 3 and 6 oils - wow talk about soft coat, confetti look and scratching gone and shedding reduced just like it promised!

I feed Cleo Hills Science Plan. She also gets leftovers some days, usually stew or shepherds pie which she loves, for a bit of variety. For treats she gets the pedrigee schmacks which she loves, but I also freeze chicken stock as ice cubes ans she loves this as well, as an occasionaly treat.

What treats do you give?

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A plain biscuit at bedtime and the occasional pigs ear. They also get bones from the petshop or marrow bones from the butchers when available, keeps them busy in the evenings when they line up in front of the fire with them :lol:

Do you feed human food and if so what?

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They get something mixed with their kibble every evening, banana, greenbeans, fish etc, or if there's some left over cooked meat they'll get that. Morning meals are usually plain kibble in a treat ball or mixed with some banana in a kong. Evening meals are often served in kongs too.


Staple diet is Nutro dry food. We switched them to nutro from RC purely because of the irregular supply of RC in our local shop. I'm not quite sure if i'm happy with it yet as the dogs seem to be that bit hungrier all the time on it yet Codys weight is up.

I have had excellent results feeding Natural Balance - I will also give raw bones, veggies and I try to stay with natural treats - bully sticks, pork hide, hoofs, etc.

My guys get a base kibble with goodies on top, plus raw bones several times per week. I have several on hand as my 4 have different needs. The puppy gets either Hills Science Diet Puppy or Eucanuba Puppy, while the other dogs get adult formula or a weight loss formula.

To this I add a range of things eg rice, stews, meat off-cuts, beef mince, chicken mince, eggs, cheese, vegetables, fruit, yoghurt etc.

The ratio of kibble to fresh foods is probably about 25% kibble and about 75% fresh foods.

I am very lucky that none of my dogs have allergies or food intolerances and none are fussy eaters. Whatever I add to their food just gets gobbled up & tolerated very well.

I have a range of treats eg dog biscuits, chews of different brands & flavours, pig ears, peanutbutter-straps, table scraps, milk etc.

The bones are chicken necks for the little dogs and great big beef or lamb shanks for the big dogs. I used to give chicken wings but have stopped that now because of the fat content in the skin.

I feed Ruby the Science Diet Puppy Small Bites right now, and she does really well with it. No problems at all when we transitioned her from the kibble she had at the breeder's. (She sent a couple of small bags of her kibble to mix at first so as not to upset her stomach.) I mixed some banana in one day, and she ate around the kibble to get to the banana, so until she's older, we're sticking with just dry kibble for meals. I don't want her to be so picky as to not eat her meal unless she has something mixed. She gets fruits and veggies for snacks. I buy those little plastic cups of diced peaches, and she ADORES them. Her other favorites are apples and bananas. I haven't found a veggie that she really likes yet. She just sniffs carrots. She also gets Charlee Bear treats in the cheese and egg flavor and goes absolutely nuts when she hears me reaching in the bag for one. When I want to keep her occupied for a little while, I stuff peanut butter in a Kong toy and freeze it for her. Now I can't eat peanut butter without her becoming a doggie po-go stick!

Ca Natural Chicken and Rice. It's the only thing that worked with Jake's sensitive stomach...so we stick with it.

With dinner they get pumpkin, enzyme, probiotic, coq10, evening primrose oil and missing link

Lots of different fruits and veggies (banana, broccoli, cauliflower, blueberries, apple, carrots, anything I'm fixing for us. Shelby will eat celery, Jake chews out the juice and then spits out the celery)

Biscuits: charlee bears, Paul Newman's organic treats, Healthy Baker biscuits

Chews: merrick's wizzler sticks, sadie's big sticks, flossies, iceland fish skin chew things

Just a word about raw chicken, I think the risk of salmonella is too high to feed this to a dog.

Tucker is currently eating DrsFosterandSmith's chicken kibble. To the kibble I add a variety of things, (not all at once of course), 1/4 cup of boiled chicken, tsp to tbs of lowfat cottage cheese, yogurt, or fresh shredded parmesan cheese (less of this one), boiled scrambled hamburg. He also gets the occasional blueberry, carrot, apple, watermelon, scrambled eggs, green beans. He's fed twice a day, about 3/4 to 1 cup (in total) kibble plus whatever else I add. I would like to rotate kibbles but thus far, he tolerates this best. I tried Wellness kibble and he had very loose stools with it. I have a full bag here! Figure if he's ever constipated ...

We feed Pro Plan Small Breed Formula puppy and adult

For treats they get little biscuits, I think they're just the PetSmart brand mixed variety. They love them. We also give them the occasional rawhide bone, Kong treat or Purina 'Frosty Paws' ice cream.

We don't give ANY people food. Indy (our eldest) was sick for a week each time we tried to give her any people food (once for a tiny corner of a cheese slice that I assumed would be fine since my parents dogs love it and another time when we tried to treat her with a little piece of turkey for Thanksgiving). So we just made it a no-people-food-ever policy in our house. Plus that way we avoid the begging at the table problems.

I feed Zoey Canidae All Life Stages. I don't add anything to it, she goes crazy for just the kibble by itself and I'd love for it to stay that way. Her coat is shiney and her stools are perfect. For treats she gets raw baby carrots, strawberries, blueberries, and green beans with some other additional fruits and veggies in there. We also have some puppy biscuits that are "old mother hubbard".

We also don't feed peanut butter, Indy never liked it (she only ate the flavored treats when she realized she wasn't getting anything else) and when we tried it in her Kong, she wouldn't touch it. :roll: