What do you feed your dog(s)?

[Piratecat]

We feed our tollers Call of the Wild; we switched from Wellness after we were having trouble with some digestion. Oddly, I'm far more militant about dog food (and the horrible, horrible ingredients in most of it) than I am about D&D editions.

Here's a quick nutrition guideline.

 

[Rhyssa]

Amazing.. human!bots can occasionally post something intelligible and useful to reply to.

We feed our little cow (aka Golden Retriever) Pedigree because he likes it. He only gets two cupsfull a day though (so about 4 cups total, which is the recommended feeding amount on the package), but he's also a very polite and professional begger. The only people food he gets is the last bite of sandwiches and/or licking bowls and plates. We've become pretty good about not feeding him extra stuff since he was 111 lbs at the last vet visit in January. He's not fat (although the vet says to lose 10 lbs on him) because he's larger than the breed standard.

I've never heard about giving potatos to prevent yeasty ears though. His get so grunky with brown goop and he really moans when we rub his ears. Not in pain, but like he enjoys it. And it seems the grunkier his ears are, the more he likes getting his ears rubbed. The vet said it's a low level infection, but I have trouble believing something like that would last for the whole of the dog's life now.

 

[Super Pony]

I've never heard about giving potatos to prevent yeasty ears though.

Both our labs have had an allergy to the usual dog-food binder/filler (rice, wheat, corn, soy etc). They would get stinky/itchy ears and then dig at them with their paws which would make their paws itch and then they'd chew their paws till they bled. We initially just treated the yeast infection in the ears, but it always came back. So we switched vets and the new vet told us that it may just be something in their diet so she recommended a potato-based food. It's a bit more expensive but it works. Now if I could just keep my four and two year olds from feeding him their pancakes and waffles...

 

[Banshee16]

I've never heard about giving potatos to prevent yeasty ears though. His get so grunky with brown goop and he really moans when we rub his ears. Not in pain, but like he enjoys it. And it seems the grunkier his ears are, the more he likes getting his ears rubbed. The vet said it's a low level infection, but I have trouble believing something like that would last for the whole of the dog's life now.

It *can* last that long. Our last dog turned out to have had E-coli for 4 years. We only found it when he was a year old, when they do the blood test to make sure it's safe to put him under so he can get the snip snip. The vet gave us a course of meds to fix the problem, we put him on the meds, then vet said "he's good to go", and so he had the surgery. 4 years later, when he came down with cancer (I located it on the X-rays after the vet missed it), they did some tests to find suitability for different treatment options, and determined the E-coli was still there.

One of the things we'd noticed was gunky/smelly ears, and the vet had previously given us meds to fix the ear infections. What it turned out was that the smelly ears are like a health symptom of something else going on......the vet explained they might have been an early indicator of the cancer or E-coli infection.

Banshee

 

[falcarrion]

My slow running neighbors!

 

[catsclaw227]

Sadly, my friend passed away last year.

He was a 175lb Newfoundland named Darwin. The most gentle, loving and kind dog you could ever meet. He was wonderful with our 3yr old.

He was eating about 4-6 cups of kibble a day (usually the PetSmart high end brand Authority), plus he got some fresh cut sausage from Pet Botanics, it looked like sausage, but they call it food rolls. I would also occaisonally give him some of the refrigerated brands, but I can't recall their name.

He had a wonderful coat, though it needed a regular brushing. We miss him very much. Here are some pics. As you can see in the last one, he had a lot of hair after a MINOR brushing.

You must get a Furminator brush!!!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I feel your pain- we lost our 13 year old BC in October, so our 5 year old BC is feeling kind of lonely & clingy...when she's not pestering us for not throwing the damn rope enough. We are, however, on the short list for a BC puppy from Visions.

 

[Herschel]

We feed our dogs the good stuff from Costco, alternating periodoically between the salmon and the chicken and lamb. Even the standard "Kirkland" food is good though. I stick to the basic rule of first ingredients must be protien and fillers must be digestable. No corn at all, sweet potatoes for filler, etc. Dogs just have trouble digesting corn and wheat, though mine LOVE fresh popcorn and carrots.

We have Laurel & Hardy dogs as one is a pork chop-legged, brick outhouse Black Lab/Dachshund cross and the other is a tall, lean, soft-haired Golden Retriever/Redbone cross (both rescues).

 

[Banshee16]

My buddy Hank (Yellow Lab) is almost eight and we try to manage his inhalation of food (the only description appropo for the way he eats...). He's a big guy at 98lbs (not overweight) and still pretty active so we feed him a potato+fish food since the protein is easier on him and the potato keeps his ears from getting all yeasty.

BUT...he has figured out that the kids are easy marks and he has become a bludgeon worthy of a 19th century London street urchin gang. He has worked his way through a birthday party and snagged three cupcakes that were IN kids' hands and had them down before the first sobbing cries could be heard by the adults.

Inhaling food is about the only dezcription I can think of for a Lab. We still joke about how ours inhaled an entire cob of corn .

Contrast that with our German Shepherd who some days doesn't even eat. We feed him Fromm duck & sweet potato. Some days he eats 4 cups, some days 2 cups and some days 0.

Banshee

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Black Lab/Dachshund cross

The physics of that must have involved a tesseract.