Dog stuff

Since you don’t give it every feeding and only as an enticement, I would get rid
of the wet food all together. It’s just costing you money honey. Dogs, all
dogs not just older dogs but puppies too, are hunger and craving driven. Just
because they eat less during a day or so doesn’t mean they starving themselves.
🙂 If they eat just what they are hungry for, then we humans use something to
entice them to eat more we are actually enticing them to gain weight. If they
truely aren’t eating the food you put out on a regular basis then that means
they don’t like the food, OR the food has gone stale. 🙂 Really, unless there
is a health problem, they will eat once they are hungry. In the 15 years or so
I have been actively breeding, training, and showing dogs, I have only ever fed
moist dog food when the dog has been ill from some gastro problem.

I agree on the dry food. I feed Nutranuggets Lamb and Rice formula. Thor is
part Shar-pei and has a lot of allergies, he’s even allergic to grass for crying
out loud, so I have to be very careful in what I feed him. Pan was a street dog
until we got him at 8 months old, so I try to be sure that what he gets its
balanced because I am sure he had deficiencies when we got him. I KNOW he was
anemic. There is no reason to feed the most expensive foods if you have a
healthy pet, and there is no reason to feed the cheapest either.

Now, having said all this I also have to let you know that I also free feed. I
put down half their daily food in the morning and they pick all day long. Then
in the evening I add the other 1/2 of their daily amount. My dogs eat like
cats. They will grab a mouthful, eat it, come back later for more. LOL!

As for the treats, I had my dogs trained to sit, roll over, shake, find, go lay
down (send them to the other room to laydown) and down by the time Thor was 12
weeks old and 3 weeks after I got Pan… All WITHOUT food treats. There is no
need to give treats like that.

Wanna know a very healthy and CHEAP treat to give to your dogs? Open a can of
canned green beans, drain and rince and use a bean as a treat, ZERO fat and
cholesterol so you won’t be adding to your dogs fat. 38 cents per greenbean can
in my area. You can freeze them and give them to them frozen too. My Vet (who
is also head of our local Greenhill Humane Society) have me this little tidbit.
Who knew? LOL! I remember when I was breeding and showing dogs that we would
slice up hotdogs and dry them in the oven and use them as treats… But since
all the info came out about onions and onion powder is used in making most of
the cheap hot dogs we used it is now a no-no to use them.

Emily Y.

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Original Message
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From: Erin M Davey
To: Budget101_@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, October 07, 2003 6:48 PM
Subject: Re: Budget101.com : Critequing the shopping trip for Erin.

I have to disagree slightly on some of the dog stuff.

Sorry I turned this into a dog newsletter, but I couldn’t keep quiet!
🙂
:)Erin

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