Has anyone tried Fish for Dogs complete and if so what do you think.

I used to use it til they changed the recipe and included pea flour. I then changed to Simpsons Sensitive range.

Same here, used it for years with it being suitable for both my toy breeds and my collies.  I loved that the fish oils had the coats gleaming.  I changed when they decided to change the recipe.  Pea flour isn't what I want to feed my dogs.  A great shame really.

Ditto the others, when the recipe changed it did not suit my dogs and made one in whelp bitch so ill that she would not eat at end of pregnancy and after whelping and we lost pups, and had a hard time with the litter in first week until we changed foods.

Co-incidence, maybe but this was not an isolated case and that was just in my breed.

What is the problem with pea flour.

No.  I do feed a fish complete food, but made by Arden Grange (Sensitive).  I use fish4dogs treats however.  My hounds luv them, and I have no problem with this product.

I'm wondering about 'pea flour' too!!  But clearly if the dogs don't tolerate this food now, there's no point using it.  

I always used to wean my litters on it and send them away to their new homes with it and recommend the new owners fed it.The last litter I had had terrible "runs" on it and I changed to Naturediet. This time I have avoided F4D and used Arden Grange. A friend also had the same problem with F4D with her litter last year.
Diane

>What is the problem with pea flour.

I am sure it is fine in small quantities but f4d replaced a large percerntage of real fish with pea flour turning what was an excellent quality food with 75% fish into  a very average  food. Pea flour cannot be compared to real fish. the latter is much more suitable for dogs to eat.

And the thing that made me really angry is that they didn't actually bother to tell anyone that they had changed the formula of the food. It would have been so easy to send out an email to their breeder club members - they were always emailing out about some offer or other but didn't bother to send one about something so important!

I was lucky, I used to order in bulk and still had a fair bit of the old recipe when I found out about the change. I changed my dogs straight over to Simpsons Sensitive and then later onto Simpsons 80/20 just before we went back to raw.

Sounds as if fish4d has shot themselves in the foot - presumably they did this originally to save cost (fish is expensive!) but if people stop buying it, it's a lose-lose situation.   I hope they don't go out of biz because their treats are good - I have noticed they've stopped doing their 2 for the price of 1 offers however!!

I didn't appreciate AG switching from 15 kg bags to 12 kg bags, keeping the price the same!!!   But this works for my ex-Giardia hound and if it keeps him away from the vet, so be it.

That's exactly the issues we had with Mum and pups on the new recipe F4D, with potateo beign replaced with pea flour.

Now Peas are a legume and I wonder if there are similar issues as with soya???
.

> xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">but f4d replaced a large percerntage of real fish with pea flour

I think it was both the fish and potatoe (remember potatoes were dear that year with poor harvest) components much reduced and replaced by the pea flour.

>What is the problem with pea flour.

Dogs cannot properly digest vegetables, and therefore dogs will not be absorbing the valuable nutrients from the food.

Dogs are Omnivores and not carnivores therefore for a balanced diet they need vegetables . To increase the protein % with the composition of the dog food lots of manufacturers use sources of proteins such as Pea flour /peasemeal (Paupers protein), Pea protein etc. Not only can this be mistaken by consumers as whole vegetables on the composition is also inflates the protein level at a lower cost. As with most food allergies and intolerances they derive  from protein sources hence why many dogs will have intolerances to pea flour / peasemeal. You might want to look at foods that include whole veg and not veg proteins.

>Dogs are Omnivores and not carnivores therefore for a balanced diet they need vegetables

No. Dogs are carnivores. They were only declared omnivores as a marketing ploy by the petfood companies who decided that there was more profit to be had feeding cereal and meat by-products to unsuspecting dog owners than there was in throwing these unwanted foods away.

Even the petfood companies studies have shown that dogs have no need for carbohydrates or quantities of vegetables. However they tend to keep quiet about it.

At the risk of repeating myself - our Gordon had life-threatening bloat when F4D changed the recipe without changing the specification on the bag.         Thanks to our vets, he pulled through, but could never eat it afterwards, even the soaked food, that we tried a little of , just to check what the problem was.   

F4D seemed to take it seriously (we had a visit from the MD and their nutritionalist) but I wouldn't risk it again

Jo

>Dogs are carnivores.

That's what I always thought.  Thanks.

>At the risk of repeating myself - our Gordon had life-threatening bloat when F4D changed the recipe

This is why I am so reluctant to try it again.  Just remembering Barbara's experience worried me too much.

Joflatcoat  Did the vet say what in the food caused the Bloat.

The vets reckoned it was a reaction to the change of recipe - so effectively the inclusion of a significant amount of pea flour where there had been none before.

Jo