We have owned and bred Gundogs for over 40 years, and in that time we have encountered some of the most touchy and finnicky eaters,that perhaps maybe suffering with a mild colitis etc.Our speciality in dogs were English and Irish Setters but now we are older we have cockers.Our Vets always comment on the lovely condition our dogs are always in, as do memebers of the public while out walking.Doubtless many of you have tried various diets but may be our way will suit your dog,who knows.
Firstly we have never given tinned meat,we think along the lines that if the meat is unsuitable for humans then it should not be given to our dogs.
So, when the cooker oven is on for our food,we put a few pigs kidneys, and perhaps a cheap cut of beef or lamb all in a pyrex dish,cover and roast slowly in the lower part of the oven for the dogs.Normally you will get a nice gravy forming around the meat.If the dog is really poorly we boil up slowly some organic brown rice from the health shops not the supermarket treated stuff,once you do this a few times you can gauge the amount of rice against the water needed.Always keep the pan covered and just before it is nearly cooked turn off the heat and let the rice swell naturally to soak up any remaining water.The organic rice mixed with some warm cooked meat is very tempting for the fussy feeder.Another thing we buy are fillets of white fish frozen,we use Cod or Pollock, and then boil a couple of fillets quite fast in a little water,until soft,this only takes a few minutes from start to finish.Drain off all water add a knob of butter and serve once cooled a little but not cold, and the dogs love this.
We usually find that Chicken, even roasted can give the dogs far worse colitis problems than lean red meat cooked..Hearts are OK roasted if the dog has no colitis problems as they tend to be fatty.
Once the dogs are better we give roasted meat on one dish and seperately we give the best complete small pellets (I cannot name brands?)and over the pellets we sprinkle some grated cheese, this then gives the dogs the incentive to dig deep into the pellets and hopefully eat them all. Keeping the carbohydrates and the protein seperately seems to be far better for their digestion, as this is the way dogs in the wild would have ate
.After each meal they get a saucer of probiotic natural yoghurt,so this works out at roughly a small pot for each dog each day.
A good tip for stopping diarrhoea or just calming their digestion down is Paediatric Kaolin.We never give this using Syringes as we find that if you mix it with a little yoghurt,perhaps the fruity ones the dogs always lick it all up.We give one teaspoonful 3 x daily for the pups aged up to 4 months and after that 1.5 teaspoons x twice daily for the older pups.Older dogs can be given a desertspoonful with yoghurt 2 x daily.This way,mixed with yoghurt the dogs do not think they are being dosed with a medicine and do not run for cover. Around our area we can buy a raspberry flavoured paediatric kaolin mix and this is excellent to calm all the really bad cases or the lesser cases.We always find that if you act quickly with colitis or stomach upsets you can often stop an attack in a day and not resort to antibiotics.
Another thing we have come to realise is that starving a dog can make the attack or upset far worse.Better to give a little boiled fish and rice and a spoonful of kaolin,this stops the retching and the wind.Setters tend to suffer with a thing called Bloat or torsion, and gettingg some food in them and stopping a "wind" build up can help enormously.I do not think Cockers suffer with bloat.
We never give our dogs any vitamins but we worm with Drontal + very regularly,even the little ones get the full worm treatment and it can stop any jelly mucus in their motions.As the developing worm eggs although not appearing in the motions can still be there with young pups.Worm treatments must be adhered to regularly no matter how well you look after them ,also flea treatments need to be done regularly starting now with the better weather coming (hopefully!)
We have more variations on diets but I think that the above may suffice.
Feeding natural foods is easy once you get into the routine, it is far cheaper than all these expensive tinned foods. Fresh raw tripe can be given to many dogs mixed with wholemeal biscuit,but Cockers do not need so much food as Setters although fresh raw tripe unbleached is fine but do worm regualarly on this diet.
