Picky Paris and the multiple food bags....

Hi,

Just wondering what your thoughts are on Paris...

She has suddenly decided after 3yrs doing well on Wafcol greyhound dry food that she doesn't like it...

Obviously if you gave me the same food every day for 3 yrs i may get a little fed up too. Previously we have seen no reason to change as both hounds do well on it, its very reasonably priced and it was the food the kennels recommended...

The dogs get tinned fish mixed in with their dry once a week and occasional meat leftovers approximately twice a month. They have denta stix and a handful of dog biccies a week.

Just really wondering how often you guys change your food? we have tried mixing in different types with her food but she just turns her nose up at it. I really cant afford the expensive foods, we have 2 large greyhounds and the amount they eat is rather substantial!

I have been feeding raw for 10 years, prior to that I fed my two previous dogs on JWB and never changed it in 8 years!

But then, my dogs are always hungry!

Can i be really cheeky and ask how much it costs approximately a week to feed raw? How large are your dogs and how many do you have? Please feel free to not answer

£1 a day roughly or less, some days a lot less if I am at home and have access to my bulk bought food, I travel a lot so often have to pay supermarket prices!

I have two dogs, GSD and Weimaraner.

If it's any consolation, my dog has reacted like this to all dry foods now.

He seemed to be doing very well on Fish4Dogs for several months, plus raw meat as his second meal. Gradually his enthusiasm for the F4D waned, to the point where he refused it. Then the same thing happened with dry JWB, and then with dry Wainwrights.

I'm now in the process of switching him over to raw, but taking it very slowly while I try and read up about it to ensure I get it right.

It may be that your dog is fed up with dry food - I know of another dog apart from mine where this happened. Have you considered switching to a wet food?

I'll probably be frowned upon for saying this but i'm not sure i have the time or energy for raw feeding. Me and my OH both work full time (shifts so the dogs are generally not alone for more than a few hours). Also i dont really cook from scratch for us human folk very often
I would worry that we were not balancing things enough.

We were told at the kennels to avoid wet foods... should i try her on these? any recommendations? She readily ate a whole small tin of fish when she turned her nose up at dinner a couple of nights ago...

She turned her nose up at breakfast and wouldn't touch it at all this morning until Phil went outside and left her with it. They used to eat side by side without a problem but i have now tried moving them into seperate rooms as Phil is a bit of a food stealer...

When I fed kibble, I never found I had to change types/flavours to keep the dog interested. However, one dog wouldn't eat plain kibble on its own, she had to have a small amount of wet food added. I went for NatureDiet food as it's a good quality wet, not full of all the sugars, fats, etc. like some are. Initially she'd have half a pack in with biscuits (remember you'd feed slightly less biscuits, because NatureDiet is a complete food too), then I managed to slowly cut it down to 1/3, 1/4, then even down to just a tiny slice in there. Mushed up with a fork and mixed in with the biscuits, she seemed to know the difference between even just that little bit being in there, but it wasn't a great hassle to add it in so I had no problems doing it. I think we mostly fed just the one flavour of NatureDiet but you can buy various flavours and if you buy from petshops they'll often let you mix and match the 18 that come in a box for the cheaper box price. You can also microwave it for a few seconds to heat it up and make it smelly to appeal a bit more.

Btw, you say you can't afford to feed expensive foods as you feed a lot - one thing to bear in mind is that you often have to feed more of a cheap food because it can be full of poorly digested filler ingredients to keep costs down. A slightly more expensive food often requires less to be fed. For example, when I worked in a petshop we had a customer come in who fed his dog on Bakers dry food, I was trying to convince him to switch off it (as his dog was acting hyper too) and he thought stuff like JWB etc. was far too expensive at twice the price of the Bakers. However, when you looked at the feeding guidelines, his dog was having 6 cups of Bakers a day - vs the two cups his dog would need on JWB! So although it was twice the price, you'd feed 1/3 of the amount so it worked out cheaper.

Ooh looks like i have some research to do then! The food they currently have is wafcol (the greyhound specific one) which is about £15 for a 15kg bag. They have 2 and half or 3 cups in the evening and a cup in the morning. I mix it with another smaller greyhound kibble and pedigree healthy vitality for a change. I might try what you did, mix in a small amount of wet. According to the feeding guide for wet she may need between 2 and 4 pouches a day which would be rather costly.

Look at the trays of stuff like NatureDiet, or PAH's version the Wainwrights stuff (supposed to be very similar, I don't have a local PAH though so never bought any). More actual food rather than gravy made of sugar, fat and salt.
My dog was a GSD so on NatureDiet alone she would have needed several trays but once we'd weaned her down to just this small amount, it wasn't such a blow to the bank account!