Let there be sunshine

Finally we get sunshine, mud season coming to an end, we were able to grade the road. That is always such a great feeling, to know we made it through another ice and snow season. [crossing fingers] The deer are coming back, into the yard and the biggest bull dropped one side of his antlers in Steve's meadow yesterday. He told me that he watched the 5 point walk into the meadow with both sides still attached then when he wasn't looking it dropped one side. Steve now has the same side shed of the same bull two years in a row. It has grown quite a bit since last year, I'll get pictures and post them later.

We are able to get the puppies out for a running poop-a-thon, now that the mud is retreating. We have been having some issues with the food we have been feeding them. After having some soft poops for longer than we like to see, I started to think that the Canidae dry kibble was the problem. I found out after looking online that the Canidae ingredients were changed since our last litter. The new formula was not agreeing with the puppies. I also found out that there is a class action suit against the company because of the ingredient change and how it effected some dogs. I was pretty P.O.d because after that dog food scare a few years ago we thought that we had picked a decent quality food for the puppies. The same food that we have been feeding Baggs [the mother] as soon as she becomes pregnant, for three litters. So it was back to the drawing board to decide what food to use. I found a website a while back that offers a independent analysis and subsequent review of most major brands, of dog food.   http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/dog_food_reviews/   I don't know how to make this a link, perhaps someone can help me with that. The site has pretty detailed analysis of the ingredients and in some cases offers a review of the food. 

I have been perplexed with the dog food that the Veterinarians always seem to push, even at our Vet. office we see stacks of Hills Science Diet, and at other Vet. offices I've seen Iams brand foods. I did research into those brands and found them to be really a pretty poor quality food. So I wondered why the Vets. always seem to push them. I got an answer when we met a lady that worked as an assistant then as a C.V.T. Certified Vet Tech, she told us that there are only a very few Vets. that are animal nutritionists. She told us that although a Vet may be more than qualified to save your dog with knowledge of medications available, surgery, or other treatments, that most know little about proper nutrition. I can't say for sure if she was correct with that statement, but I still had to wonder why many Vets. including ours pushed foods with such inferior ingredients, and fillers that are controversial. Then she told us about the kickbacks that the dog food companies were giving the Veterinarians. Some even get these great expense paid trips to Hawaii, and other forms of payola that keeps the dog food on the shelves at the Vet. clinics. Their clients see the food when they take their pets in, and think that it must really be a quality food, otherwise the Vet. wouldn't be selling it.  They buy it at an extremely marked up price. Later they are at CostCo or someplace where they see it at a much lower price, so they think "great deal" and start buying it in quantity. It's a win-win for the dog food manufacturer and of course the Veterinarian doesn't come out too bad either.

We have always fed our dogs with some of the more inexpensive brands, Atta Boy, Western Family, as long as it has a 21% protein or above, we try to mix the high protein formulas with the regular formulas. But when we started selling puppies for $500 we decided that we should give the buyers a puppy that has the best nutritional start in life, that's why we feed Baggs the good stuff when we determine that she is pregnant. So with all the good intentions and little knowledge we bought a more expensive brand that we thought would be better. We were very naive at the time thinking as a lot of people do, "The more money we pay the better the dog food"  Then we hear that there is a lot of dogs sick and dying from tainted ingredients of some major brand named foods. We searched through the list of brands that may be tainted and sure as heck there is the food we had been feeding, on the list. Talk about being bummed out, [pissed] we vowed that we would never again let our lack of knowledge cause us to buy the wrong  puppy food. So I started an online search to make sure that never happened again. I read reviews until I was going stir-crazy many of those written by the dog food manufacturers. Not really a good and honest source of info. I found that each dog food company had all the rave reviews you might ever want to read about their brand, and some of them would even compare their brand to other brands, always showing how their food was tons better, and how you would have to be a fool not to but their brand.  It made me think of the labels on some dog food bags that gave a feeding amounts for dogs using size [weight] as the criteria for that amount. I remember thinking that the amount they were claiming I should feed my dog was entirely too much food. I decided that if I were to feed my dog the amount that they were calling for she would be overweight in no time and I would have to buy food again before I got paid. I continued to feed her the amount that I always had, and she lived to be almost 16 yrs old. I guess the point is, never trust the dog food manufacturer to tell you what is the best food or the proper amount to feed your dogs. They have the bottom line as their top concern. If you keep that in mind then the picture gets a little more clear. 

Some of the forums that read were helpful, but the majority were B.S. and just irritated me. The thing about online forums, is that a lot of times actual fact based discussion takes second place to the blathering rhetoric of some silly agenda. The first thing I found was for every online forum there are dozens of breeders ready to attack anyone asking questions.

Anyway this isn't about the online forums, that's a whole separate topic of ranting, maybe for a later date. I just wanted to point out that it's one thing to use the dog foods that probably wouldn't rate high in ingredient analysis, such as the brands we feed our adult dogs, brands like Atta Boy, and Western Family, after all we have been using those brands for years and our dogs all lived into their teens. It's another thing to pay out the ass for a brand that you think is really the best food out there when it's absolutely no better than the Store Brand. Don't be fooled into buying an expensive brand of dog food, that isn't as good as some less expensive kinds available.

Our neighbor has a big blond dog that had some serious skin issues, that they had been to the Vet for several times, the Vet gave them medications, [pills, and creams] to fix the problem. They were sad to see that the itching and the sores continued. One day, after seeing how much Buddy [blond dog] was suffering with the condition of itchy dark purple blotches on his skin. I came home and typed "My dog has itchy purple blotches on his skin" into google, it took about three minutes to determine that he had an allergy, more than likely a food allergy.  The answer was to change his diet to a hypoallergenic  brand of dog food, one without certain grain sources that many dogs are allergic to. He could also be given Benadryl to relieve the itching. I told my neighbor, but he was stubborn and wouldn't listen to me because he was feeding both of his dogs food that cost $45 a bag and he claimed that it was the best food out there. Well the soreness and itching went on for a year, then one morning while having coffee over there, I noticed that Buddy had pulled out a bunch of fur and was really uncomfortable. I mentioned the Benadryl again, my neighbor rolled his eyes and blew me off again, but his wife was there this time and when she heard about the allergy thing, she went right to the cupboard and pulled out Benadryl . She gave Buddy a dose and they noticed an almost immediate relief to his itchy skin. When they told me that it worked I emailed them a link about dog allergies. A couple days later Buddy was eating a new food, a hypoallergenic  brand of dog food.  And guess what! It cost about the same slightly less than the brand he was allergic to. [go figure] That was about 5 months ago and Buddy is doing great he has grown back all his fur, it came back in dark on his sides like it had apparently been when he was a young dog, the purple blotches lightened back up and they can pet him again without him going nuts trying to crawl out of his skin. 

The moral of the story is ,,, "Always listen to what I tell you!!!"  No just kidding... it's "That the wife is always less stubborn and always listens to reason!!!!"  No No No, [in that case yes] The moral of the story is... "Never assume that a certain dog food is best, just because you paid a lot of money for it!!!"