Please can some one help?

I have a CKCS (Charlie). Charlie is 9 mths old, we have had him since he was 10 weeks old. 
He is so fussy with his food. When we 1st got him he was feed with EUKANUBA (what the breeder fed him), he then kept getting an upset bellie.
So I changed his food too James Wellbeloved puppy, he would not eat this so I gave him Butchers tins for puppies. This he would eat but I was not happy kepping him on this as it gave him runny poo.
So I then got a free sample of Vitalin which Charlie liked so I stuck to this as I know he liked it. After a few mths he stoped eating, so I tried the JWB again and yay he ate it.
But know he has again stoped eating, I tried the Vitalin again he did eat it but only one meal. I popped to the vet and asked her what to do, but she said that as he is still a 'bouncing pup' just try another food.
I was getting worried as Charlie hasn't eaten since Sunday, I bought a can of pedagee chum which Charlie wolf'ed down.
Charlie does seem to get an upset tummy with the slightest of things.
So my question is should I try another 'compelete' food or stick to the Pedagree chum?

I've always found Pedigree products to be a guarantee of an upset tum with mine - even the ones appearing to otherwise have the constitution of an ox (where does that saying come from?  Do ox eat Pedigree? :D )

If you keep offering Charlie alternatives, he will continue to be fussy - they are very good at putting us through hoops ;)  That said, I personally don't go in for watching my dogs eat as though every mouthful is an effort - I too have a fussy breed and know how frustrating and worrying it can be.

I'd suggest either going back to the variety of JWB he last enjoyed and try encouraging his appetite by putting a little warmed water over it  (you could of course add a spoonful of something extra tasty but this may well lead you back down the road of faddy behaviour) OR, possibly more effective and appealing to Charlie!,  moving over to a moist complete such as Nature Diet or Nature's Menu :)

HTH, Teri

Sorry for the typo's I have my 1 year old sitting on my lap as I type.
Thank you for the help, I have looked at the Nature diet web site and might give it ago.

My dog likes variety and I don't mind providing it. He usually has the same complete food as a base but I add a variety of toppings to it. It changes dinner from hoh hum, I'll just not eat for 4 days to chasing the bowl around the room. I know many people will say to never give in and let them go hungry until they finally eat but I'd rather he enjoy his food. I switch so one day is fish, then tripe, chicken, last night was a bit of roast beef and cauliflower with cheese. Minestrone soup is a favourite. I like that he eats a wide range of meats, veg, cheese, fruit and other fresh food. One benefit is now I can feed him just about anything without causing tummy upset or the squits (unless it's too much liver).

Oh and another Q, how long should he be on puppy food for? Is it upto 12 mths?

I have a fussy 14 month old, so I'm interested too. My other 4 dogs all eat well.

>So my question is should I try another 'compelete' food or stick to the Pedagree chum?

Try another complete ;)

It sounds as iff your dogs message is loud and clear,he gets bored of eating the same food for every meal,everyday.Where's the excitement in that? Personally i think variety is a good thing,rather than a negative and eating the same food,particularly plain dry pellets consistently is NOT a healthy option IMHO. If you want to feed JWB,rotate through the different flavours,and then switch to a different brand and do the same.This is what i do along with adding fresh foods to each meal,i do this not because my dogs are fussy,but because it is a healthier option and makes feeding times much more interesting for them.

I can recommend a food that i can almost guarantee your dog will Love,plus it has exceptional ingredients,it's called Timberwolf organics,i am currently feeding the wild&natural formula:


Ingredients:
Chicken Meal, Fresh Chicken, Chicken Fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols and rosemary extract), Low Ash Salmon Meal, Potatoes, Sardine/Mackerel/Anchovy/Tuna Oils (preserved with mixed tocopherols and rosemary extract) Eggs, Dried Chicken Liver, Dried Whole Milk, Dried Whey Extract, Kelp, Alfalfa Leaf, Casein, DL ï¿¿ Methionine, Potassium Chloride, Lecithin, Taurine, Lysine, Carnitine, Choline Chloride, Creatine, Probiotics: (Lactobacillus Acidophilus Fermentation Product, Bifidobacterium Thermophilum Fermentation, Bifidobacterium Longum Fermentation Product, Enterbacter Faecium Fermentaion Product, Bacillus Subtillus Fermentation Product, Blueberries, Cranberries, Mixed Tocopherols (a source of vitamin E), Zinc Proteinate, Iron Proteinate, Manganese Amino Acid Chelate, Thiamine, Niacin, Vitamin A Supplement, Calcium Pantothenate, Riboflavin Supplement, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Iodine Proteinate, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Biotin, Folic Acid, Pyridoxine (a source of vitamin B6), Cobalt Proteinate, Papain, Yucca Schidigera Extract.

Analysis:
PROTEIN: 36%
FAT: 18%
FIBER: 2.5%

http://www.zooplus.co.uk./shop/dogs/dry_dog_food/timberwolf

Next i'm going to try the wilderness elk and ocean blue. My dogs will scoff this food down without any added extra's,but i still add fresh meat, naturediet,cottage cheese,yogurt,veggies,fruit,dinner leftovers etc.

Eating the same food every day, providing it is a balanced complete diet which all UK foods are, is demonstrably healthy as most dogs are fed this way in the UK and we have a very healthy population :)  If people want to vary their dogs diets that is fine and will suit some dogs but for others it is a recipe for disaster ie for the naturally fussy eater, which some breeds tend to, leading to more and more fussiness which can lead to a very unbalanced diet when the dog either picks out only the bits it desires or the owner gets desperate and starts feeding only desirable stuff regardless of balance or little is eaten whilst waiting for "something better" to come along.  It is a route to be trod with great caution in my experience.

A little update;
After the pedigree chum yesterday, I did a search on here. I found some really good threads. I tried one tip today and it worked. The tip was to microwave the food for a few seconds, Charlie wolfed down his warm JWB.

>Eating the same food every day, providing it is a balanced complete diet which all UK foods are, is demonstrably healthy as most dogs are fed this way in the UK and we have a very healthy population

I accept that is you're opinion Isabel,but common sense tells me otherwise :) I wouldnt eat the same food for every meal everyday, simply because it just wouldnt seem to be a healthy option.Most pet  foods available would be comparable to eating a bowl of wheat/corn/bone mush with a multi vitamin tossed in,there are foods that have the utter bare minimum to fit the "complete and balanced" criteria and there are others which exceed it,not ALL foods are created equal,for instance you cant compare a food such as bakers,beta,pedigree,gusto et al with the food who's ingredients i listed above,the former fit the bare minimum,the latter exceeds it :)

Personally i prefer to see my dogs to eat with gusto and not have to force every bite down,and if that would mean adding a little healthy extra or changing to completely homecooked or raw,then thats what i would do :)

Fortunately, thanks to the food agencies and trading standards all foods in the UK are equal in meeting the daily requirements of an average dog :)  That is the optimum requirement there is no value in exceeding it, extra vitamins are excreted unused and extra calories or protein would not be desirable for most.

>simply because it just wouldnt seem to be a healthy option.

If only 'just seeming' were of scientific value! Think how much money could be saved from testing if we all believed what 'just seemed' best! :D

>most dogs are fed this way in the UK and we have a very healthy population

Who claims that   Obscure surveys, veterinary profession or the pet food manufacturers - per chance the same ones who are constantly introducing novel diets, sensitive mixes, "hypoallergenic" lines and "prescription" foods

Surely by the very existence - i.e. demand met by supply - of so many *special diets* that is more than minor acknowledgement by the major players that dogs are nowhere near as healthy as they should be ;)

There have been several independent surveys, the Morethan one springs to mind.  I reckon an insurance company will have pretty much the same bias as ourselves towards knowing that we have healthy long lived dogs :)
As to the supply of "special" diets I'm fairly certain they are bought in part by people fearful of intolerances or that have experienced perfectly natural tummy upsets in their dogs having eaten something they shouldn't or diets being changed too rapidly etc, so I am not sure we can conclude that their existance confirms the full level of need.  Having had dogs on pretty much the same diet daily for a life well into their teenage it seems rather unlikely to me that there was anything lacking in that daily diet :)

Just look a my Cavalier -11 years and 10 months old and should have died over 4 years ago according to the vet with a heart as bad as his. He never gets any variety in his food. He eats it very happily and he's doing really well. :)

I definitely think the special diets are playing on people's fears more than anything else. In recent years it has got ridiculous. When RC started telling people with Persian cats they must have specially shaped food to be ABLE to eat it I really had enough -how do they think they ever managed before?! Do we REALLY need one food for Yorkies, one for Labradors, one for GSDs, one for every breed? Little and large makes sense, and different ages -but BREEDS? The health ones are much the same. People WILL buy what they think is necessary, so they sell. Doesn't mean they are essential.

I think there are a few breeds that seem to require a special slant on feeding but I would not have thought these ones particularly.

So why the development of different diets omitting "known" problem ingredients such as wheat, soya, maize, gluten, beef, dairy etc etc etc

Every company I can think of provides *OTC diets* laying claim to excluding certain ingredients - this completely leaving aside any *breed specific* or *prescription" diets - why would they go to that level or expense and bother in setting up differing production lines etc if it were not an accepted fact BY THEM that there are sufficient numbers of dogs lacking basic good health with the previously available multi-ingredient foods

>I'm fairly certain they are bought in part by people fearful of intolerances

Yeah, that'll be it ...... :rolleyes:   Why would anyone suddenly come up with a fear of "intolerances" unless of course suggested by their vet having treated the dog and found that to be the most likely cause!

I can only repeat what I have said above in answer to the same points.

>unless of course suggested by their vet

or any of the other sources of "information" about diet ;)

Well I can't imagine Waltham, Purina, Hills etc scouring the internet fora before deciding on whether to drop a ton of previously bog standard ingredients ....... 

Perhaps they are more likely to have taken their info from vets (and, I should think to a much lesser etxent, insurance companies :) )

I see little point in not acknowledging what's happening around us Isabel - clearly the food manufacturers are following the novel ingredient route with valid reason .......

>Well I can't imagine Waltham, Purina, Hills etc scouring the internet fora before deciding on whether to drop a ton of previously bog standard ingredients ....... 

Can't understand what you are saying there Teri, I was referring to the fear instilled in the customer not the manufacturers.  What does drop a ton of previously etc mean?
I'm just repeating the same point really, you seem to be assuming because they have found a market for these diets that proves the need is genuine but I can't see it does.

>you seem to be assuming because they have found a market for these diets that proves the need is genuine but I can't see it does

And Who or what created the market? 

Why have the major companies in recent years been bringing out diets, for eg, with tapioca or oats or potatoes instead of the previously common and more cheaply available grains? 

Why bother to introduce lamb, salmon, vennison, white ocean fish, pork?  Hardly cheap alternatives to beef or chicken   

Why drop off the menu wheat, gluten, maize, soya etc?

Personally I can't understand what you can't understand   CLEAR :D

Again I can only give exactly the same answer that I have given above.  Discovering and exploiting a market for something does not prove that the need is genuine for all customers.  We are going round in circles :)
I do not misunderstand your points generally :) only the bit above about dropping a ton etc.

>only the bit above about dropping a ton

merely a colloquialism :)

>We are going round in circles

yes, ever increasing it would appear :)  Bit like the need for more wide ranging choices & exclusions in diet :)

I'm all for choice :), people can have all the choice in the world, especially when they really need it ;) but that is very different to saying people need to vary the diet of a perfectly healthy dog on a perfectly healthy diet because lack of variety cannot be healthy.  Taking us right back full circle :D, as many of us can attest to, this is demonstrably not so.

>but that is very different to saying people need to vary the diet of a perfectly healthy dog on a perfectly healthy diet because lack of variety cannot be healthy.

Which I've said or hinted to where exactly

You didn't, it was the original point I picked up in this post.

>And Who or what created the market?

I would imagine the same sort of people who create a market for anything, whether it's skinny latte instead of simple coffee or stoneground flour (which is known to cause dental problems) instead of ordinary ground flour, or Jimmy Choos instead of Clarks. Any marketing consultant worth their salt can create a market where none existed before!

True - you'd have thought they'd have come up with a diet by now for breeds predisposed to stones.  Oh, that's right, they have :)

Must be all those problems the vets are reporting ..... Nah, maybe they just have their marketing consultant glued to the food board on here :D 

>glued to the food board on he

Admin would be proud indeed :) but the internet has many, many more pet food related sites and forums for manufacturers to glean marketing possibilies................or needs :)

>you'd have thought they'd have come up with a diet by now for breeds predisposed to stones.

Which sort of stones? The different types need different formulations.

>Oh, that's right, they have

If only!

Well according to yours, Isabel's and Goldmali's interpretations of supply merely meeting whimsical demand you shouldn't have long to wait .......

Wouldn't go holding my breath or starving the Dals meantime of course ;)

At the moment stone-forming is too much of a niche market to warrant mass exploitation. Although the numbers are rising since the BARF trend hit the big time. Coincidence? Possibly.

Oh, not just dals, by the way. Other breeds are prone to urate stones, and all breeds can develop struvite stones. Even dals.

>Although the numbers are rising since the BARF trend hit the big time. Coincidence? Possibly.

1,000's of years then   Gawd they're slow :D :D :D

1000s of years? No breed's been around that long, Teri. The individuals that suffered the problem just died and nobody collated the evidence ...

Neither has the fashion for BARF been around that long. It's only very recently in history (post-war really) that even humans have eaten meat every day (and that's only in Western society) - the dogs certainly didn't get it that often!

>The individuals that suffered the problem just died and nobody collated the evidence ...

and this will be documented by evidence to be found on ......

oh, right, don't bother :P

Teri, they would definately have died before we had vets that would have been able to assist them to pass urine when the stones blocked the urethra.

There may well have been no such illness then (or now!) - after all there's no diet for them and not nearly enough web waffle yet  

Is this starting to become completely illogical or is it just me

The illness has always been there (it's very similar to gout in humans) - it's only recently that the link between it and diet has been discovered. As more is learned, treatment and, even better, prevention, will improve.

>it's only recently that the link between it and diet has been discovered

one of many I'm sure :)

>and this will be documented by evidence to be found on

When a stone blocks the urethra the animal will die within 3 days unless operated on. That's documented fact.

Rotts have for one ;)

Really? According to what I've read the breeds that eventually went into creating the Rottweiler were known in the late |Roman era, but the breed as it's now known wasn't created until about the 14th century. Of course that's from a German breed site ...

You been googling JG    Don't want to believe all that you read on the web ;)

>Don't want to believe all that you read on the web

Exactly. ;) Anyone with an axe to grind can start a rumour and create a market ... :D :D

>Anyone with an axe to grind

Surely (hopefully) that would be a minority  

Frankly I fail to see the validity in much of this exchange   Some may wish to believe that dietary requirements are being met on a needs basis and others on a whim.   I am one of the former.  But then I am open to accepting that needs change and science reveals more and more as time goes on.  Some of which will back existing beliefs and regimes and some of which will renounce same.

I have no interest in trying to persuade anyone to follow my view or dissaude them from their own :)

As this, as usual, is degenerating into a less than useful exchange, I'll leave those who enjoy such threads to do so uninterrupted :)

>Some may wish to believe that dietary requirements are being met on a needs basis

What sort of 'need' though? Animal need or owner need? Colourings are put into pet food to fulfil the owner's need to make it look interesting and help them think they're being more caring - it's not needed by the animal, who doesn't give two hoots what his food looks like!

I think it is a minority, Teri, but as someone as interested in the subject or nutrition as I am, I feel sure you will have done the rounds of these web sites and seen how just the few are touted about amongst themselves until they become ubiquitous and take on a psuedo stature but when the old search for motives is applied ;) a bias is so often evident.
I don't think the exchange has been less than useful :) although it has wandered rather far from the point of whether there is the least harm to be found in feeding an unvaried diet :)

1,000's of years then

No dogs wouldn't have eaten meat ONLY -they would have eaten a much larger part of the carcass including stomach contents with vegetable material in.

And domestic dogs would have had human leftovers including large proportions of cereals, because that's mostly what the humans ate. Good quality meat was far too valuable to be fed to a mere dog. It's only very recently in western society that dogs have risen in status to more than just a replaceable working assistant.

That kind of diet does exist for CATS. Bladder stones started to become more common when dried diets did -as the cats would not drink enough. The bladder stone diet is eh, a DRY one. :rolleyes: When I had a cat which got blocked regularly we tried the diet. He still blocked. We started feeding him canned only so lots of water and he never blocked again. Others simply give extra water by mouth daily and have had the same result.