A dog food question

[dsc]

My dog has eaten dry Pedigree for the entire time I have had him. Since getting his teeth surgery I have been wetting it and have tried to return to dry twice with limited success. So my question is, if he is needing softer food forever should I do the wet his dry food thing or switch him to canned. I feel bad feeding him waterlogged dry food which can't really taste good but switching food after years of the same food can be dicey. I am thinking that if after trying dry again next week it doesn't really succeed I have to figure out what to do on a permanent basis. So am wondering what you all would suggest.

[NYC_SKP]

1. I advocate dry food, maybe not right away given the surgery, but soon.

Wet food is shit. Waterlogged dry food is shit.

Feed the dog love. Love, and dry food with as little wet food as possible.

JMHO.

[cheri010353]

2. We mix Abby's dry food (Orajen)

with high quality wet food, cooked chicken thighs and chicken broth or raw hamburger and beef broth. We started doing it to get her to take medicine, but she seems to do really well on it. Maybe you could just use broth to wet the dry food so it would still taste good.

[glinda]

3. Check out Sojos. IF he is aging he should have wet anyways.

http://www.sojos.com/

I have three senior dogs with multiple health issues. They have all trimmed down and love this food.If you buy the one that you add meat to it is really affordable. The ones with meat in them are very good. I would avoid canned due to the liners having toxic chems in them.

[dsc]

4. looks interesting

he is getting up there. I found him so I don't know his exact age but he was about 1.5 then and it will be 12 years in april.

[KC]

5. If you do

decide to switch make sure you do it slowly! Mix a little new with some of the old food to give him(his system) time to get adjusted otherwise he will have diarrhea.

[glinda]

9. Good advice.

[Myrina]

6. Mix it with beef or chicken broth ...

I've had several foster kids who've had dental issues, diet issues, or been just plain picky & I use (cold or warmed up) broth in their dry food .... I also cook green beans in it & mix that in with their food in order to get them their veggies (one of my dogs is a 'manly man' who would live on raw squirrel if I let him, so getting him to eat dry dog food and veggies was a trick!).

[dsc]

7. broth is an option I am considering

At least I would feel better about the flavor of what he is eating.

[Myrina]

8. ... and it doesn't have to be mooshy-mooshy ...

.... one of my senior beagles only had about 4 teeth in his mouth and he was still ok with it mostly hard. Hell, he even tried to work on pig ears & steak bones!

The front teeth - according to my vet - are for piercing/shredding so if your guy still has a couple molars, he'd be fine with it still being firm because those are the actual 'chewing' teeth.

[Silver Gaia]

11. Go for low sodium broth if you do that.

My vet warned against using canned broth because of the salt content, but we sometimes used the low sodium kinds with no ill effects. When my sweet boy was in his elder years, I had to cook food for him that was mixed with softened kibble. We used chicken breast (that I boiled and used the broth to soften his kibble), and we added rice or potatoes as well. (There were some other additions, too, like olive oil and fish oil, and a vitamin supplement.) All on the advice of our vet. Cody lived to be 18.

[glinda]

12. I found most broth has added stuffs in it that I personally would not feed my dogs as well as too

much sodium over all. It is hard to find just plain brother but you can make it by boiling a (non chem/natural) whole chicken, bones and all...well I would take off the skin. I think feeding Sojos would be less intensive and comparable in price though as well as super healthy.

[TorchTheWitch]

10. that's what I used to do with my first doggie when he got older

Actually, he was really finicky about his dog food, so I did that most of his life.