Glad things are going well

About the food - I totally agree too much protein can make dogs crazy (as can too many sugars etc - never ever feed Bakers! ).

One thing to consider is protein quality - for instance, soya is protein and may push up the protein level, but often dogs don't digest it very well and so don't have the protein available to them in the digestive system/body.

Also be wary of comparing say, canned to dry as although it will refer to levels of protein in both, there is water in canned and so you have to do a bit of maths to work out the correct level.

If you just check out dry and look at what the protein is (eg the first one or two ingredients should be lamb or chicken or whatever.. and hopefully not the horrid bits but quality good stuff, ie not feathers, bills etc....) then you should be oK.

Try to avoid any with EEC permitted additives as that usually means BHA and BHT which some believe are not very safe regardless of the fact it's permitted....

Not easy this feeding lark, is it!



Wys
x

Dont worry we all have to learn, My son fed his GSD a good quality food 'for working dogs' since hes a working breed and gave me some to try for my collie. It sent him totally hyper, my sons comment was 'yes it did that to Sonny!' He had made the mistake of thinking because it said 'working breed' it was fine for a dog that didnt actually work all day! Easy mistake to make.

JWB is a good food but Wiccs use CSJ and some of their ranges are a lot cheaper than JWB Might be worth looking on their website.

That would be lovely Rachel, what time can you get here
Anytime you want just give me a couple of hours notice.
Elaine xx

The big question.....what to feed

Wiccaweys are currently feeding CSJ and the dogs are doing great on it, some of the ones that really stuggled to maintain weight have done really well without the other nasty side effects.

Other foods they have fed and done well with are Arden Grange, Laughing Dog and Chudleys Classic.

Glad to hear you have had a positive walk with Poppy yesterday, hopefully the good experiences will start to outweigh the negative. Paul at Wiccaweys is a lovely guy so im glad that you got to talk through the problem with him. I hope it helps.

Alexa

when we took dylan to training class ,we feed him bakers complete they told us ,to take him off straight away ,allso ive heard the same thinks about peddigree chum ,we have feed are ,wag which they both loved willow coat came a long lovely on that ,no upset tums ect ,but i have put them on chappie as i was giveing them on the afternoon feed ,the tinned food ,so though i would try the dried as well ,they both love it

I did see a big difference in both Ben and Mia when I took them off dried food and onto raw, but I reallise that not everyone wants to do that

-- also, I just got my copy of 'control unleshed' yesterday, have nearly read the whole thing and it is really good, I dont agree with everything 100% but there are some really great games to teach a reactive dog to totaly change their thinking of bad things approaching
Really good book - well worth £20 and although I got it for Mia I can see ways it will help Ben too - and that woman with the hyper collie in agility class

Mine is on order and should be here some time very soon!!!!
Elaine xx

That may well be true, but, when you buy those frozen blocks of fish, tripe etc. the PrizeChoice or similar, it clearly states on the pack "for working breeds only", so I took the trouble to ring them coz I got a bit worried about that being fed to my PET dogs, and the company turned round and told me the ONLY reason they put that on their products was to avoid the VAT and nothing more, the food was suitable for all dogs, they just wanted to save us some money

Well I never knew that!, am off to Jolleys again! in the morning to check out all the labels.
I have tried them on Wagg and it really didn't agree with them, runny poos, mind you I am saying it was Wagg maybe they just had dicky tums at the time, but I dont want to go through that again!! Poppy was really poorly. Sometimes I think there is just too much choice
Elaine xx

Sorry elaine, I forgot to say how glad I am that progress is being made with Poppy, but you're bound to have a few blips along the way. I might order that book too, it could help ME in the future if not now Hope all was well today anyways on your lovely walks and her training.xx

Re the food thing, I just looked on my bag of Hills large breed puppy, and I noticed the protein level is only 29%, so that 40% you mention with yours IS pretty high isn't it! I know with our horses, the higher the protein level the loopier they would be, sometimes to the point you couldn't sit on them, so it has to be the same in the dog world. Having said that, I still have a VERY hyper puppy even though my protein level is low, but I do add some tripe and chicken (protein again!), but I will continue to do that because of what we now know about the bloat syndrome on another thread the other day, the link stated you should add meat and other derivatives to avoid the risk of tortion, so I'm sticking with that!

Good luck elaine, I hope things go well for you with Poppy, especially if you're going to any training with lots of other dogs and people around and of course all that help from the trainers!