What Do You Feed Your Dog/Dogs?

We all talk about proper parrot nutrition and how important it is.

Lets talk about our canine family members .

I used to feed my dogs a prey model raw diet. Which they did great on and truly enjoyed. I liked it because of the famous raw stool that would turn to powder once dried, so that meant the pooper scooper got retired to the garage. While my dogs were healthy and happy on it, it was ALOT of work!

Raw feeding is great if you have Grocery stores and butchers that provide multiple cuts of meat and organs for a decent price. But it's not always easy. Also if you want to do raw in bulk you may have to purchase a second freezer just to store everything lol.

I had my dogs on Raw for two years and though the prep was pretty long and nasty, my dogs were healthy as ever.

I then got a job where my hours made it much harder to continue to prepare raw meals for my dogs. I thought of the premade raw options but the price is beyond ridicules.

And so I transitioned my current dogs onto Blue Buffalo Wilderness. WOW did I forget how convenient it is to just measure out kibble into bowls lol. I know it sounds lazy but after having to hack up chickens and large cuts of meat, measure, and portion it all out, and then have to defrost meals every day...It was nice to go back to kibble. A lot less gross too. Lol I hated handling raw meat...Especially organs .

Recently I switched my dogs to Canidae Grain Free PURE Elements Lamb formula. Mainly because two of my four dogs were not liking the Blue Buffalo and I liked the limited ingredients in the Canidae formula. Many of my raw feeding friends who feed half raw and half kibble feed Canidae and only had good things to say.

I can say that ALL of my dogs enjoy it much more than Blue Buffalo. They chow it down like it is the best thing ever. Even my finicky little Chi/Yorkie mix eats it happily. Everyone has shiny coats, perfect weight, and no itching problems ect. I definitely think this is the best food for us.

So far they

One of my dog is on a specialized diet, urinary SO. While the other two have changed around but they're on 4health. And one of them have major allergy and weak stomach problem but he's fine on 4health. When you rescue too many animals you don't get the worst food but you get something in the middle. Only the birds gets to eat more expensive diet....lol.....I don't even eat anything fancy....

One of my dogs has a very sensitive stomach, always burping, poor thing. He also gets diarrhea sooo easily!
He didn't do well on the Blue Buffalo, maybe too much protein. He is on Nutro Ultra dry food and his stomach is fine (still burps though) but I can't get him on a healthy weight even though I tried their Weight Management diet too. He needs to lose 15 lbs!!

I use to do raw also, then we moved to va and I couldn't find good meat there so back to kibble they went. I switched brands a lot, my boxer had issues with hi protein kibble so I have to watch that. They also drank a lot more water when on higher protein kibble now we are back in ca and I am currently feeding natural balance limited ingredients. I use to feed canidae but their coats were dull and brittle I have a friend that works on the canidae off road truck team. I would love to feed raw again...

I am VERY blessed with a phenomenal butcher in our commissary (military grocery store). He not only provides us with excellent raw meat and bones, but he provides us with GREAT cuts of meat as well.

But I don't feed RAW exclusively. I also feed Taste Of The Wild Buffalo.

I think my dogs' coats speak for themselves. They are VERY healthy, and my AMBull has quite some allergy problems, which I finally have under control.

WOW gorgeous dogs!!!

I feed different things. When my (original) dogs were young I switched to kibble only because they'd leave tinned or fresh lying about for the flies. They weren't greedy so I could put the kibble out and they'd eat what they wanted. Then my girl got old and started having some issues, so I'd give her whatever she wanted and reintroduced wet and fresh food. The fresh or tinned wouldn't lie about because my other dog would polish it off. Unfortunately, he's now gained a bit of weight so we're going to have to look at portion control for him.

Short answer, all sorts of things, sometimes fresh - mince or hunks, sometimes kibble, sometimes tins or dog food sausage, sometimes this brand, sometimes that. I don't get just one brand or flavour, I don't want them getting fussy for "their" food. They get what they are given. If they don't like it, tough.

Wendy,

Your dogs are gorgeous!!!!

Wendy your dogs look beyond gorgeous and so well loved and cared for. Great work!

I don't have dogs () but would love to feed RAW. But considering my health and stuff, I just think it's going to be far too much work, and premade is so expensive like you said.

So probably will go to Kibble. However I would be alternating the flavour of kibbles. Poor mutts must get so bored of the same flavour day in and day out.

I see people buying food (own brand) for their cats and dogs at my store and they'll buy 9 packs of the same stuff and I just think... poor mite.

Raw meaty bone diet is the best if you can do it

I'm using 'Taste of the Wild' kibble, to which I add cooked chicken into all 4 dogs' bowls, with 4% cottage cheese added to the puppies' bowls. They all gobble it down in seconds flat!

My dog was eating Canidae but was just switched to one of the Kirkland brands from Costco.... which he's been on before. I prefer Canidae...

I feed both of mine Rachel Ray's Nutrish Chicken and brown rice dry kibble.It is all humane grade ingredients and the first one is chicken. the fat used is EVOO of course and a portion of each sale goes to animal rescue. Both my dogs really like it and their coats are better than the blue buffalo that they used to get and kind of decided they didn't really like it any more. an added benefit is that it is also better priced. I have a chiweenie and a chiuahua

My dogs typically eat Fromm dry kibble and i normally give them the salmon-based food. One of my dogs has IBS and my vet thought salmon would help, which it did. They all have fish breath after a meal but they tolerate it well and enjoy it. (Also as a vegetarian myself, i tried them on a vegetarian dog food but they didn't like it and i wasn't impressed!!)
I 'liked' the Party Animal organic food but Chu Chu's IBS was aggravated so we went back to the Fromm as the standard. http://frommfamily.com/products/four-star/dog/dry/salmon-a-la-veg

One of my dogs has allergies, so he is on California Natural and Natural Balance LID

Ranger eats Nutro brand Large Breed Young Adult, after starting on the puppy food. Our vet told us when we got him that if we didn't switch to a high quality large breed puppy food we could end up with him growing too fast and see joint and organ issues later on. Sure enough his growth slowed considerably! He also gets any raw scraps unless they are bones small enough to choke on. He gets pork and Beef bones if they are cooked, no cooked fish or chicken. The vet says he is perfect weight and his coat is smooth and shiny.

I feed my dog pro plan Salmon. He has a history of dried skin and allergies. According to my mom when he was given to her she quickly noticed his hair was falling out and he was breaking out. She ended up putting him on pro plan Salmon after putting a finger on what the problem was.

JerseyWendy said:

I am VERY blessed with a phenomenal butcher in our commissary (military grocery store). He not only provides us with excellent raw meat and bones, but he provides us with GREAT cuts of meat as well.

But I don't feed RAW exclusively. I also feed Taste Of The Wild Buffalo.

I think my dogs' coats speak for themselves. They are VERY healthy, and my AMBull has quite some allergy problems, which I finally have under control.

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Is your brown dog a staffordshire terrier? He's gorgeous

We feed our dogs purina one but Allie is geting old and has troubles she's 11 now and is slowing down so our vet said we should change it to dog food that's for senior dogs. Our friend go hunting and give us some cut meat from the deers and elks. We cook them up and they make good dog treats!

I believe in feeding all of our pets at least 3 different foods every day, preferably from different companies so that no nutrient is missed. With the dogs (we have 5 dogs - a large black lab mix, a large mixed boxer/pitt bull, a mid-sized 45lb mix, and 2 fawn pugs) we feed Diamond Naturals, either lamb or chicken, also adding canned 4Health, and whatever meat we are having or have made for them, mostly chicken, but could be pork roast, liver, turkey, egg, etc. That's on a daily basis. The cat gets a mixture of Beyond, 4Health, Iams and Purina One - of mixed recipes (chicken, salmon, turkey, etc). He does not like canned (I'm grateful he doesn't). The koi and goldfish get a puffed food like Vibrance, or in cold weather, the wheat based equivalent by TetraPond, a fish meal based pellet, and flakes, and the birds, well they get Harrisons, Roudybush, Brown's Naturals Cockatiel (a mix of seed and pellets), plus nutri-berries and avi-cakes, PLUS soaked and sprouted seeds, and whatever fresh vegie we're eating that day PLUS a mixture I have made up and frozen that is gaba rice, kale, apples, cherries, grapes, various beans, broccoli, carrots, and whatever else I have handy. I'm very happy with the diets of the animals - and have always been kind of obsessive about my pet foods, but I lost my black Pug Bacchus last year and he was 17 years old - my vet used to call in all the other vets and techs to give them experience with such an old dog. I can't believe what we spend every month on pet foods! But I see everybody who has posted is using some premium brand or other. How come I never see that at the store when I'm shopping? Usually I'm seeing somebody with the biggest bag of Econ-o-Mix rather than Purina One or Iams.