Just wondering if anyone has any diet recommendations for a fussy mum to be! Also, any suggestions for a good puppy diet; our last litter of golden retriever puppies didn't seem to keen our choice. TIA.

I have recently used Amirene - small business at the moment.  She owns, breeds and shows Goldies.  Lots of flavours.  Puppies thrived on it as well as raw.  Search Facebook for details

For mum to be, she needs to be on the normal top quality diet she should always be having.   Maybe as she gets bigger, dividing the daily intake into several smaller meals as there won't be as much room in her stomach, as 'normal'.   I do not believe in feeding a pregnant bitch 'puppy food'.  This is for PUPPIES, not mum.   And I'd be careful she doesn't put on unnecessary weight prior to whelping as she needs to be lean and trim.   Her puppies will take what they need before being born.   Once you see how many she has to cater for, then you up her food intake, especially into the second week when the puppies will be taking the most.   Too much milk early days and she could run into mastitis as newborn puppies don't need lashings of milk.

With feeding the puppies - when weaning started, we started supplementing using warmed goats milk 4 times a day, with a very tiny amount of raw lean mince once a day.  The puppies loved that and the temptation was to give more, but early on, they should still be taking most of their nourishment from mum.   Once they could lap, then I added a good quality puppy food, mixing it with either goats milk, or water, warmed, into a porridge.  Mum was out of the box during feeding, going in to clean up afterwards and allowing 'comfort nursing' until she felt the sharp teeth, and wanted out - fast.   We used a food that our new owners could access easily, so they didn't need to switch until later, if at all.   With our heavy boned breed, we'd add scrambled egg, cottage cheese, raw mince and so on to the puppy food (not all at the same meal) and also gave them a goats milk drink mid-morning, mid-afternoon and last thing.   None of that would be needed by all breeds!

Nothing personal by the way, but I respect people feeding food which works for their dogs, just personally trying to avoid as many nasty ingredients. My puppies love Wellness puppy food (you can find a review on it on https://goodpuppyfood.com/ ). It has good ingredients and meat content.

https://www.allaboutdogfood.co.uk/ this is a useful resource .

If Orijen dog food was available in Australia, i would choose that above anything else! It's available in the UK.

I haven't tried their dog food (I don't have a dog right now) but I can vouch for Akela dry cat food. My Pixel loves it so much that I can use it for training treats. :)

(Yes, I train my cat. I know. But you'd be surprised how well he learns. Sit, beg, paw, high five, come, circle, leave it, and we're working on retrieving and jumping through a hoop.)

I know many who train their cats .clickers being very helpful but then i do  belong to very large fb group for raw fed cats which helps :) mine just train  me !

> I know many who train their cats .clickers being very helpful but then i do  belong to very large fb group for raw fed cats which helps :) mine just train  me !

I use a marker word (yes!) but it's exactly the same as clicker training and yeah, it does work. Works nicely on rabbits too!