We’ve been feeding Penny (our 4.5 month old white German Shepherd – purebred) Wellness dry dog food. We started her on Science Diet, but my wife read lots of bad things about it, so we moved her off. Penny LOVES this dry food whereas with the SD, she was meh, take it or leave it. The vet says that Wellness is one of the best brands out there.
She (Penny) also eats some all-natural milk bones and liver chewies for treats and the occasional leftover chicken or turkey.
We have a 13-year-old rat terrier who has always had dry food (with the exception of the day after a dental cleaning) of varying kinds, usually Science Diet, Iam’s and things like that. He’s currently on a specific Science Diet formulation because of arthritis (which, I have to say, the dog food did wonders to alleviate). Aside from the arthritis and some burgeoning sclerosis in the eyes, he’s happy, healthy, and doing just fine.
The terrier mutt I had as a kid lived on a dry diet of pretty cheap stuff. He was 17 when we had him put down because of cancer. Aside from a stroke at 15 or so (from which he recovered quite nicely) he didn’t have any health problems until the end.
Our pups eat a good lamb/rice kibble that’s Omega 3 & 6 enriched, also has a glucosamine/chondroitin supplement built in. We feed twice a day, and wet down the dry food with some warm water (one of the dogs eats way too fast, the water helps slow him down a bit) and a generous tablespoonful or two of Trader Joe’s canned food. We slow cook beef leg bone chunks for their occasional treats and we also keep the rendered fat to add to their food in teaspoonfuls. If we roast a chicken or something they’ll get the leftover gristle and skin scraps, and usually the innards as well. We also keep rendered chicken fat for them as well–they’re both very active and tend to be skinny and the little bit of extra fat keeps their coats shiny and gives them a little calorie boost. We avoid giving them most human leftovers since we cook with a lot of onions and those aren’t too good for dogs.
The cats prefer a fish based dry food and we split a can of wet food between them every day on the advice of our vet–says that cats tend not to hydrate well and benefit from moist food to keep their kidneys in good shape. They get a lot of Trader Joe’s cat tuna, they love that crap. Stiggs is 13 this year and the vet is very impressed at his condition, he’s a healthy old fart.
I’m a big fan of Natura products, my cats get EVO, which is a kibble, but the next best thing to a raw diet, believe it or not. They get 1 cup a day between the three of them, so I meal-feed the kibble twice a day. It looks like such a tiny amount of food, but the stuff’s 600 kcal a cup, and their needs as 10, 13, and 14 year-olds are under 200 kcal each.
Natura is a great manufacturer, their products can only be found at higher-end pet supply stores. Really, anything that can be bought at a grocery store is crap, some better stuff can be found at Petsmart and Petco, but the high-end food is pretty much going to be at the high-end stores.
That said, I know plenty of pet owners who fed and feed their ancient 15-20+ year-old animals all kinds of “crappy” food and the age of the pet seems to attest that it’s all really just a crap shoot and luck and genetics regardless of “breed” for any particular animal.
I think the biggest factor in health for animals is keeping pets lean and feeding them the appropriate amount of calories. Some are able to self-regulate, and some are not. It’s up the the humans with the higher functioning brains to take care of that part, and the feeding recommendations on the food containers are not really accurate. Even the EVO my cats get has a higher recommendation than I actually feed my cats, but that’s only because I have the wherewithal to have a vet on hand who can tell me the true calorie requirements for my animals, I feed a food which is well-marked as to calorie content per cup on the package, and I can feed accordingly.
Ask your vet to calculate for you what the ideal calorie intake for your pet is, according to ideal weight, and feed that amount.
All the animals I’ve seen live longer lives have one thing in common: they’re not obese.
For the record our Standard Poodle is very slim, I just hate seeing her show no interest in her dinner at all.
Our Poodle X Border Collie had some Lab in her too…mostly shown by her appetite and stubborness (she was well before the time any dog was called a “doodle” of any description). She could have eaten for an Olympic team and was “portly” but lived a very long happy life.
Our Alsation/Dobbie X was always very slender though they ate the same food.
The Alsation/Dobbie X saw food as nutrition the other dog saw food as LIFE and FUN! Though the Alsation/Dobbie ate hher dinner every day.
The poodle is just not interested in dry food for nutrition OR fun.
She does not get table scraps every day but the days they don’t arrive she just doesn’t want to eat.
Maybe it is just me but a dog not wanting dinner just doesn’t seem right.
We feed our dog Auggie Merrick. He gets some dry “Before Grain” in the morning, and more dry at tnight with a couple of spoonfulls of Merrick canned on top of it at night. He’s in great shape, energetic, etc. The two cats get Merrick Before Grain dry, but the only canned food the picky little buggers will eat is Fancy Feast. We split one small can of Fancy Feast between them in the morning only.
My beloved tabby Phoebe got two cans of Fancy Feast every day, and for a long time my vet scolded me for giving Phoebe “McDonald’s for cats”. Phoebe lived a long, healthy life and died at 21. So, we’re sticking with the Fancy Feast!
Dry with water. In my experience, most dogs will (if only eventually, in some cases) eat pretty much anything put before them. Of course, there are breeds and individual dogs that are more food-driven, but in general, they’ll eat what you give them if you make it clear that they’re not getting anything else.
ETA: my dogs also get given old stale bread occasionally as treats, and ice cubes similarly.
Agreed. My points were in the context of just making sure of what calorie requirements are, and trying to stay within those constraints. Whatever food you end up using will be what works for her.
It sounds more to me like she’s learned to hold out for the good stuff - as mentioned by someone else upthread, too.
Have you tried canned food? I didn’t see any mention of that, except to mention that you think it’s a good idea. Have you tried it with the same “meh” results? A little of the yummy stinky nutritionally-balanced-for-dogs canned on top of the kibble? Picky eaters can be very frustrating, but you have to be careful that you’re not training her to be picky!
Is there argument in your household that she should just get kibble and that’s it? If that’s the case then whoever thinks kibble is the only “best” diet is misinformed.
The single biggest factor in the quality of a dry dog or cat food is the presence of by-product. You want to go with a food that does not contain any by-product. There are plenty of affordable diets out there that don’t have by-product but you’ll notice that all the big name brand nationals use it. SciDi, Iams/Euk, Purina/pro plan (nestle purina not purina mills).
I’ll second the recommendation for Natura products. They actually have a line called Healthwise that is more reasonably priced. Natura has an excellent reputation in the industry for quality control and reliability. They have their own factory and procure their own raw materials.
I could go on and on with dog food topics. Its pretty easy nowadays to find a by-product free food without paying out the nose. I think for most people its worth a try just for the potential reduction in stool volume.
All US pet foods meet the AAFCO standard. That means they all have adequate vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fats, etc. Different approaches to hitting those standards and whether to add extras is a huge topic of debate in the industry.
Usually added glucosamine/chondroitin in a dry diet is way below what is considered a therapeutic level. On the bag somewhere you should see the milligrams per kilogram. I’ve never seen a food that hits the recommended dose with the volume a healthy dog will eat in a day. Now that little extra may help as a preventative measure but for a dog with joint problems a gluc/chon supplement is the way to go. The jury is still out on the effectiveness of gluc/chon but there is a ton of anecdotal evidence that it can help. At the very least its worth a try as any improvement is pretty easy to notice.
Shutting up now… Like I said I could do this all day.
We have always just fed dry Pedigree, except for pregnant and nursing bitches. Of course, it’s periodically supplemented by anything they can sucker/steal from the kids. The dogs always love it when the kids’ friends come over for dinner and they naively think that if they set a plate on the coffee table the food contained thereon will remain intact. Ha! However, my cat won’t touch anything that’s not dry cat food. Not tuna, nothing.
I don’t have alot to say about dog food, I feed mine Before Grain now, and their coats are all much better but fed Purina and/or Science Diet before that and I have two purebred, unrelated border collies that are pushing 15 this year, plus a nine year old that is still working hard. I think your personal track record has as much or more to do with the genetics behind your dogs as the actual diet. 9 years old is really not that young for a Airedale. You say “only” nine years, but the larger breeds typically do not live as long as smaller dogs, with individual exceptions of course. I think the fact you had mixes before the Airedale is one factor, the cat may have just been an exceptional individual, etc. A rancher friend of mine had a cat that had been around as long as anyone could remember. He was in his mid-thirties and while he couldn’t remember the exact time the cat was born, he knew it was before he was 12. That cat ate the cheapest possible cat food (plus whatever it could catch- ranch cat) and they had a theory that the cat was well preserved from whatever food preservatives were in the meow mix :).
When I adopted my first cat on my own (lived to 15, and he was a bit of a lemon), I had to list all our family pets and how old they were. At the time we had a 17 year old cat and a 15 year old sheltie. The cat was a Frisky’s dry food only his own life, and we fed the dog Pedigree and the poor girl lived in the backyard because my parents were too lazy to housebreak her. But even without being pampered, both of those animals lived long lives. The cat would have lived longer, but he was born before we realized cats should stay inside and we could never make him an indoor cat after we lost another to coyotes. At 19 or so, he disappeared one night, but he was still going strong up to that point.
Anyways- while I like to feed my dogs a decent, reasonable diet, I don’t believe that it can work miracles or override genetics and breed tendencies.
Years ago, I read in No Bad Dogs that dogs can easily be trained to quickly eat what you offer them. When they are pups, put down the food, and anything they haven’t eaten in ten minutes gets thrown away. She said that any puppy that won’t bolt its food is sick. Once they get used to the routine, they’ll eat everything in a hurry. If your dog turns up her nose at dry food, she’ll be eager to eat tomorrow evening. It won’t hurt her to miss a day’s food.
As another poster said, your dog’s weight is the best way to see if he’s eating right. If your dog gets fat, he will die early, and his legs will hurt while he’s alive. That’s what my vet told me. He sees too many fat dogs, and he’s sad to see that. Weighing your dog at home is simple. Weigh yourself on the people scale, then pick up the dog and weigh both of you. If the dog is too big to pick up, borrow a neighbor and his scale. It’s the same procedure, except both of you pick up the dog while standing on both scales.
If he weighs too much, feed him less, and keep checking.