Good quality mixer for small dogs?

littlesnuggy

Since getting my pug at Easter, I've fed him Butchers tripe and a Sainsburys-own mixer biscuit - the tripe was on the recommendation of his (show) breeder and everyone always comments on his lovely glossy coat. He's in excellent health, with one exception...

His poos have never been particularly firm (and he's had to have his anal glands emptied once), so recently we started adding a little bit of bran to his meals to help. This has made no difference.

More recently his poos have become very soft (and very stinky, although he's never had the runs), and I think this has coincided with a new bag of mixer biscuits which I noticed were a lot smaller pieces so therefore may be a different recipe.

I know he loves the tripe and it's what his breeder recommended, so I think I should first try using a better quality mixer with it. Does anyone have any recommendations?

If that doesn't help I'll look at trying some other wet foods, however I'd like to try changing one thing at a time.

krlyr

Personally I would switch away from the Butchers too but like you said, could be worth waiting a little while to change that. The trick to choosing a dog food is to look at the ingredients, they give away much more than the rest of the label! One giveaway with the cheaper foods is that it's notoriously difficult to track their ingredients down on their own website - if they're confident it's a good food, why aren't they bragging about the contents by posting them all over one of their main marketing areas, their website?
Butchers ingredients are (tracked them down on an online petshop) as below
Meat and Animal Derivatives (min. 51%, incl. Tripe min. 18%, min. 15% Fresh Meat),Minerals

Unspecified meat - you would think from the label that tripe flavour is just tripe, but the ingredients show otherwise. By just saying "meat", this means that the meat can change from batch to batch. One lot could be chicken and beef, the next chicken and lamb, the next beef and pork - all they have to do is make sure 18% of the 51% in the tin is tripe, but the rest is up to them to chop and change, which they'll do dependent on what's cheapest at the time of manufacture. This can be a common cause for upset tums, because if your dog is intolerant of, for example, pork, one lot of tins could agree with its tummy but the next could contain pork and cause an upset stomach. You want a dog food that specifies the meat in it so that you know it will remain the same in each batch.

Animal derivatives - these are the leftovers from the 'meat' part of the animal. Chicken feet, beaks, feathers, cow hooves, everything leftover. Sounds gross but in itself, it's not bad for dogs to eat these - most of an animal has some benefit when eaten, even if it's not entirely digestible. For example, fur or feathers can help "clean out" the digestive tract, but in petfood it will be all mushed up so loose that benefit, plus given in entirely the wrong proportions (a dog eating a chicken gets 2 feet, one beak, one bird's worth of feathers, mixed with a large amount of meat - but in this tin you're getting 18% tripe, 15% meat so 18% must be derivatives, a much larger proportion.

If 51% of the tin is meat and derivatives, what is the other 49%? I would wonder what "minerals" exactly means in this context, because I would want to know what I was feeding my dog.

http://www.dogfoodproject.com/index.php?page=betterproducts could be worth a read.
Wet food brands I'd recommend would be:
Naturediet
Natures Menu
Natures Harvest

Much better ingredients and they actually state what's in them!

To answer your actual question (sorry!), you don't really need to add a mixer to the diet but if you do then I would go for a plain mixer like Denes - these are rough-shaped wholegrain biscuits that generally just contain wheat.

Switching to better quality food could help with the anal gland issues - the better quality the food, the more digestible it is, and the firmer the poos which helps the anal glands empty better. Bonus is that there's less poo to clear up, plus the dog tends to need to eat less too as it's more digestible - so you feed less (means expensive foods don't work out so expensive, by feeding quantity) too. Otherwise, if bran hasn't worked, another method used is a raw chicken wing. Raw bones are safe for dogs to eat and the bone can bulk out the poos to help with anal gland issues. One a day, or perhaps more/less dependent on dog's size, can help - with a pug you might want to just give half a chicken wing every other day or something.

littlesnuggy

krlyr wrote: »

Personally I would switch away from the Butchers too but like you said, could be worth waiting a little while to change that. The trick to choosing a dog food is to look at the ingredients, they give away much more than the rest of the label! One giveaway with the cheaper foods is that it's notoriously difficult to track their ingredients down on their own website - if they're confident it's a good food, why aren't they bragging about the contents by posting them all over one of their main marketing areas, their website?
Butchers ingredients are (tracked them down on an online petshop) as below
Meat and Animal Derivatives (min. 51%, incl. Tripe min. 18%, min. 15% Fresh Meat),Minerals

Unspecified meat - you would think from the label that tripe flavour is just tripe, but the ingredients show otherwise. By just saying "meat", this means that the meat can change from batch to batch. One lot could be chicken and beef, the next chicken and lamb, the next beef and pork - all they have to do is make sure 18% of the 51% in the tin is tripe, but the rest is up to them to chop and change, which they'll do dependent on what's cheapest at the time of manufacture. This can be a common cause for upset tums, because if your dog is intolerant of, for example, pork, one lot of tins could agree with its tummy but the next could contain pork and cause an upset stomach. You want a dog food that specifies the meat in it so that you know it will remain the same in each batch.

Animal derivatives - these are the leftovers from the 'meat' part of the animal. Chicken feet, beaks, feathers, cow hooves, everything leftover. Sounds gross but in itself, it's not bad for dogs to eat these - most of an animal has some benefit when eaten, even if it's not entirely digestible. For example, fur or feathers can help "clean out" the digestive tract, but in petfood it will be all mushed up so loose that benefit, plus given in entirely the wrong proportions (a dog eating a chicken gets 2 feet, one beak, one bird's worth of feathers, mixed with a large amount of meat - but in this tin you're getting 18% tripe, 15% meat so 18% must be derivatives, a much larger proportion.

If 51% of the tin is meat and derivatives, what is the other 49%? I would wonder what "minerals" exactly means in this context, because I would want to know what I was feeding my dog.

http://www.dogfoodproject.com/index.php?page=betterproducts could be worth a read.
Wet food brands I'd recommend would be:
Naturediet
Natures Menu
Natures Harvest

Much better ingredients and they actually state what's in them!

To answer your actual question (sorry!), you don't really need to add a mixer to the diet but if you do then I would go for a plain mixer like Denes - these are rough-shaped wholegrain biscuits that generally just contain wheat.

Switching to better quality food could help with the anal gland issues - the better quality the food, the more digestible it is, and the firmer the poos which helps the anal glands empty better. Bonus is that there's less poo to clear up, plus the dog tends to need to eat less too as it's more digestible - so you feed less (means expensive foods don't work out so expensive, by feeding quantity) too. Otherwise, if bran hasn't worked, another method used is a raw chicken wing. Raw bones are safe for dogs to eat and the bone can bulk out the poos to help with anal gland issues. One a day, or perhaps more/less dependent on dog's size, can help - with a pug you might want to just give half a chicken wing every other day or something.

Thank you for such a detailed response! I know that the ingredients of Butchers aren't the best, and might look to switch that too, but his coat is so lovely and glossy I think he can't be missing out nutritionally (but agree that I could be feeding him all sorts of nasties too). I'm looking for the cheapest place to get the Denes mixer and will try substituting that for the other mixer to start with, before getting a different wet food.

I'll get some chicken wings today and try adding them to his food - do I just put the whole (or half) thing in his bowl with the rest of his food and let him crunch it up himself?

krlyr

Some dogs take to raw meat straight away, others are a bit more suspicious. I would offer it to him by hand at first and see how he reacts. You may need to hold one end to prevent him from swallowing it without chewing, as it can take a dog a little while to learn to crunch it up first. Dogs' teeth are designed to tear meat, break bones into smaller pieces and swallow in large chunks because their strong stomach acid does the rest of the digesting but large bits of bone pose a choking risk and can sometimes get impacted in the digestive system so it's better to make sure the dog does chew them up properly.
If he doesn't seem keen on raw wings you can try getting some chicken fillets and offer him cooked chicken with his meal and then slowly cook the chicken less and less until he eats that raw - then you can offer raw wings again. You should never cook the chicken wing because cooking changes the bones from soft to brittle, and makes them dangerous to eat. A few seconds flash frying the meat on the wing can work but do be careful to do it very quickly so the bone doesn't cook.

Many dogs appear to be fine on lower quality meat but the effects can show themselves in other way - loose poos for example, which an owner may assume is normal, until they switch their dog to a better food and notice the difference. My dogs are raw-fed and you could pick their poo up with your hands and not have any residue left on them, the poos are so compact and dry. Don't worry, I don't do it with my bare hands! But many dogs fed on cheap commercial foods don't have poo that solid. Loose poos may not seem major but if they're indicating that a food isn't very digestible then are dogs getting 100% of what they need? Plus you're already seeing one health issue that can be common due to dietary issues, problems with anal glands.
Also worth bearing in mind the longterm effects - kids may spend years eating sweets and fizzy drinks and still seem fit and health but if they didn't grow up to develop better eating habits then they face issues like diabetes, tooth decay, etc. - I can't see how similar "junk" diets can be good for dogs longterm.