Archive for category feeding
At least the puking has stopped
Any time that I add some Evo into their diet, someone gets sick. Argh.
In desperation last week before we went out of town, I was forced to go to Petco and buy something that hopefully would stop the puking in time for people to watch our dogs for us. I ended up buying Pro Plan…the Selects version, Natural Salmon and Brown Rice formula. I’m still trying to figure out if there is a way to make the old dog less fart-prone, so thought I’d give this protein source a try.
And so far, honestly it’s gone really well. Dave (who’s lone job when it comes to the dogs is to pick up the yard) reports that the “end product” is small, well-formed, and in smaller amounts. Brady is still occasionally stinky, but not nearly like he was before. Course they all eat it, but none of them are picky. 
The ingredient list is good for a dry food, and seems to be very digestible.
I think for now, we’ll give this a go and see what I think in maybe a month. I would still like to supplement them with protein sources, so I’ll try to add that back in eventually.
OK, let's see if this works
Nothing like jumping on a bandwagon. Although I’m not quite ready to make the time/shopping commitment that Carolyn is making, we’re going to give the more natural feeding thing a try. I did stop today and buy a bag of Evo…I plan to use that as a base. I then went to Costco and bought a 10-pound box of 1/4 pound frozen beef patties ($19.99), a bucket of cottage cheese ($3.79), and an 18 pack of eggs ($1.79). I’ll look for some other meat sources when I have some more time to shop around. The Evo was $45 for a 35 pound bag. I’m not sure how long it will last, but I’m guessing over a month with only feeding partial. And all of my dogs eat fairly low amounts of food in general…Lizzie, although young, is a piggie who gains weight just LOOKING at food, and while Leo is also young and very active he’s just never required much kibble to keep a good weight.
But still, with only 3 dogs it looks like this will cost me about $100 a month? Maybe a bit less. We’ll have to see. That sort of number kind of hurts after paying only for the cheap Costco food.
My HOPE is that this not only makes my dogs coats nice and is healthier for them…but I REALLY want to find something to stop Brady’s stinkiness. He has had the WORST gas for probably going on 2 years now. It was bad when I was feeding Chicken Soup, and still bad when we switched to the Costco chicken & rice food. Obviously, something about the way he processes food has changed in his old age, because I had fed Chicken Soup for quite a while before this became an issue. He also became a poop eater at the same time.
Eggs
Leo is too…dumb? gentle?…to figure out how to get into a whole egg. He wanted to carry it around all night. The other two heathens were encouraging him to do just that, so that they could swipe it when he inevitably did something stupid.
I used to give whole eggs about once a week on their food, but haven’t done it for quite a while. All this talk of natural feeding has me considering it again, and in the meantime I figured they could have an egg. Brady needs something to fatten him up anyway…speaking of which, I need to have some bloodwork run on him, because he keeps dropping weight for no apparent reason despite me continually upping his food portion. Sigh…silly stinky old dog, anyway.