wondering if you can help! We have a retired greyhound, 4yrs 6 months old, brindle boy weighing 36.8 kilos. We have been following the advice of the kennels where we got him from, feeding him Dr John's Gold complete food. But having just visited the vets, we have been told it's literally junk food! Now, I must admit, we add a bit of pasta and fish, or meat to it, but recently his stools have turned to mush and the farting is terrible. So we asked the vet and he said the diet was COMPLETELY wrong for him. NO bones, no meats, no pasta, no treats - we should be using something like Hills, or Royal Canin (which is extortionately prices at about 45 a bag)....I don't want to be a cynic but we can't afford these prices and I wonder if this is a money making scam from vets.
I am prepared to cut out the meats and pasta and other treats but surely a complete food like Dr Johns with 20% protein is good enough...isn't it? I want to give him the best but I just can't afford what would amount to 50 a month! Would Supadog be better than Dr John's?

Are these vets just trying to get commission on these foods or is it true, you only get what you pay for? We've been told we should not give the dog things like weetabix, bread, milk or ANYTHING that a human would eat (surely a dog would eat meat tho, being a carnivore???)

Help me guys!

Lorraine...again!

It might be that something in the food doesn't suit, i've discovered that i can't feed my dogs on poultry based foods or they get soft poops/wind. However you don't know what the protein or cereal source is in the food to know what might be causing a problem.

Personally i wouldn't feed my dog the Dr Johns looking at the ingredients.
Cereals, meat & animal derivatives, yeast, milk & milk derivatives, oils & fats, minerals. With EEC permitted antioxidants.

This site might help to explain the ingredients labels a bit as it is very confusing. EXTERNAL LINK you could easily find a decent food without getting something at hills or canin prices and some would say there not the best out there.

This is the label from the complete food i use as a comparison.
Salmon Protein (Min. 23%), Potato (Min. 21%), Sorghum, Whole Grain Barley (Min. 10%), Atlantic Fish Meal, Whole Linseed (Min. 4%), Sugar Beet Pulp (Min. 5%), Sunflower Oil, Dicalcium Phosphate, Alfalfa, Natural Seawood (Min. 0.5%), Sodium Chloride, Potassium Chloride, Methionine, Marigold Extract, Yucca Extract, Rosemary Extract.

Which brand of complete food do you use ? It sounds good, but wondered about the potato.

The meat I use is mainly ox heart and beef cheeks.

If you want to use a cheaper dry feed, try to get one with rice (apparently best) or corn as the grain content rather than wheat which is apparently harder for dogs to digest and may be contributing to the runny droppings and farting problem. (Mine had runny droppings until I took them off wheat based kibble.)
Cheers,
Tom

I curently feed wainwrights (pets at home brand)salmon & potato
hypo-allergenic/sensitive kibble its not a cheap food, but my dogs are looking great, have firm poops and no toxic wind so i'm happy with it. I'm considering switching to Orijen in the future as i think it may work out about the same price per day, but looks a much better food. I'm also interested in raw feeding too but its not practical at the moment & i need to do more research.
EXTERNAL LINK EXTERNAL LINK
I'm not a dog food expert by any means just try to read & gather information to make my decisons on, which isn't all that easy at times with lots of conflicting stuff. However if you can gain some understanding of the labels and then you can make a more informed decision about which is the best food for your budget and more importantly find what suits your dog. You will probably also have to do some calculations to work out the cost of food per day to get a fair comparison rather than just going by the bag price as that can be misleading.

For ones around 10-20 perhaps also look into CSJ K9/Autarky EXTERNAL LINK skinners, alpha, burgess theres probably loads of others too in that bracket.

Lorraine

Lol very true! Well cut out the milk/extras and see if he improves then add back in each thing one at a time and see what effect it has. I'd agree milk seems the most likely culprit. I think for the same price you could get a food which has specific meat/cereals in it.

I will look at Arkwrights.

I don't use a dried food, but I do keep a bag of something just in case of emergencies, generally Australian formula.

I feed raw. It's time consuming, but I think it's the best and it's cheaper. I use meat, eggs, cheese, fish and veg as well as bread, pasta rice and spuds.

I get milk from the farm and yes, sometimes they get loose with it, if they get too much.

Lorraine, maybe you could replace the milk with plain yogurt.

Most vets practices have to make money I suppose. The expensive dried diets are a good form of income for them...as are some of the standard medications they prescribe.

The last time I weighed him was in july when he was wormed he was 36kg. I weighed him on monday and he was 38kg. He's been having 200g of chicken mince mixed in with his food twice a day. I have now reduced the amount of dried food he is having and he is still putting weight on. You can see the difference in him already he's only been having it for 2 weeks. Also his stools have become firm and not as much as he used to do.

My whippets and my ex racer have Red Mills Tracker and do fine on it it was just my youngsters and William. All are doing better now they have the raw meat mixed in.