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Uk breeders of Weimaraner and Hungarian Vizsla
Copyright@2001-2011MrsRachelSavage

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My theory:  The health of the dog inside can be seen by what comes out of the other end.  A nice subject to be sure.

 But anyone that owns a Weimaraner will know that you can feed one bowl of cereal food and they can triple it.  A stool should be firm from am to pm. It should not be huge as if it is, they are not using the food well.  Food should be digested, and if its not a dog will eat a stool.

I am not the expert on diet, far from it, I am just someone that lives with dogs, and knows what suits my dogs best of all. I do not profess to be some oracle on dietary systems.  I just know what suits the Weimaraner/Hungarian Vizsla. 

This is my website, and my ideas.  I have always told everyone to research as much as you can do before making any decisions. I have been feeding the natural diet now for 10 years. 

In the end day a complete food is the easiest diet to follow.  If that is what you choose then choose wisely. A hypo allergenic one which is rice based, not maize, wheat, gluten, corn.

Do remember websites are written by humans all with different view points.  What ever you read, understand that you do not have to do what you are told! LOL....... 

Complete foods or wholesome raw foods?

A complete food is a dry food.  It is made by manufactures and it contains usually either wheat, rice, corn or maize with vitamins, minerals and other additives.  Proteins are often chicken pieces or chicken meal.  Chicken meal is usually not a quality product.  It is easy to buy, just from Tesco's, pets world, jollyes, local pet shops or wholesalers.   It is all down to personal choice if you feed your dog a complete food or raw meat.  Complete foods are easier, and less messy.  That is the biggest plus I can think of.  However now a days they are expensive.  They do not always suit the digestion of the Weimaraner.   Hungarian Vizsla's being active dogs can loose weight on complete foods if not fed a good quality complete food.

FACT:  The complete foods which will suit your Weimaraner or Vizsla are foods which do not contain wheat, maize or corn.  Rice products suit much better.  Although the twist is just boiled rice often does not suit your dog and it will come through pretty whole.

Feeding even our pet pug frankie on natural instinct food against other food makes we noticed her stools were firm, easy to pick up and not many.  On other diets, loose and horrible.  So its not just the HPR that benefits....ALL DOGS BENEFIT

Their are some makes of food out there which fit the category.  "The natural dog food company". Nutro have a great reputation, check the ingredients. 

Now you have heard of the saying "You are what you eat"!

That saying can be applied to dogs as well as people.

Let us look at dogs, and raw foods for a moment. Eggs, chicken, rabbit, fruit, herbs, eggs, curdled milk, bone.  This is most likely your dogs natural diet.  Is it easy to feed this?  Well it is as easy as you decide to make it.  You can be worrying about your dogs diet every day and having to add this or that into it. But the truth is you do not need to worry all that much.  Today we are lucky that their are food company's out there which sell dog meat all packed up, all you have to do is empty the packet into the bowl defrosted and feed. Its that simple. 

Natural instinct for eg do a pack of meat in a ice cream type tub, you can defrost it, and keep it in the fridge.  In it is not just chicken but bone, butternut squash, kelp, salmon oil etc.  Your dogs complete food in a tub.  What could be more convienient.

Firstly: I highly advise if you decide to feed natural foods that you will firstly buy a freezer for your garage.  If you cant afford new, go on EBAY and buy second hand. Once you have your freezer their will be no stopping you.  If you cant buy in bulk then order weekly your food.

Secondly: Buy two plastic tubs with sealed lids on them.  To put in the fridge.  Also stainless steel bowls for feeding as they will harbour less germs and easier to clean.  However natural instinct products come in a useful tub.

Thirdly: Go onto Amazon and buy yourself some books on the subject of raw foods:

The Barf diet by Dr Ian Billinghurst Or Give your dog a bone by Dr Ian Billinghurst.

Fourthly: Buy a box of plastic throw away gloves so if you handle the meat you do not get it on your fingers.  Just makes life easier.  Or spoon it out of the tub so you do not have to handle it.

You can follow what the books tell you.  But I do not follow any diet as such. I do what I want on the day. I make life that simple.  

I feed my adult dogs tripe.  Chicken and tripe. Tripe and veg.  Chicken carcass, or chicken wings. 

I always make sure once a day my dogs get bone.  So there fore the evening meal is a carcass or wings.  The carcass we give have wings attached and have loads of meat on the carcass.  It was for human consumption because the butcher cuts off the breasts to sell.  It makes sense for the butchers too as they are now selling their waste product.  Years ago this would be simply waste, so more of the animal is being used.

Yes you feed the carcass whole a dog will crunch it up.  Also chicken wings whole.  But for puppies from 7 weeks to 21 weeks you may want to smash some of the bones up a bit.

 One evening a week my dogs are rested from eating any bone, or anything.  So they are not fed Sunday evenings to rest their stomach. I find this a great idea, and I was told to do this by another barfer who said that dogs fast in the wild there fore we should not over feed our dogs.

 I give my dogs stale bread (But not too much), cooked root vegetables sometimes. But every day raw carrot in the meat as it already comes packed that way.  Every day my dogs egg free range eggs from our ducks or chickens. We have plenty to go around.  My dogs are also fed any left over's.  Although the chickens and ducks will get the majority of chopped veg and potatoes peelings.

My cats are fed chicken and bone together, crushed it looks like chicken mince. Plus fish.

I also buy www.dorwest.com keepers mix.  I will use honey in my dogs diet on occasion.  They love sweet substances, and I even give molasses on occasion.

Now I enjoy cooking for the house, in fact I love it, and I have got so that I enjoy making my dogs daily food up for them as I can see how much they love it. 

For breeders please note puppies fed on this diet you will get less stools over night, and it does not smell as rancid as complete fed puppies.  Also its firm!  They are very fat puppies also by 7 weeks. Plus they simply cant eat more than 3 meals per day as they feel full up. As you know complete foods you need to feed 5 meals per day. This goes to show you alone the amount of extra stools you will be picking up. Its all common sense stuff. I do however add to a puppies diet goats milk or lambs milk and I stop this around 6 weeks of age, and then just give water, as milk will make the stools softer.

Pictured 6 week old pup fed on the barf diet.

If you have several dogs together you may want to feed this diet to them separately as they will try to steal everyone else's as its so yummy!

So what are 10 benefits for feeding raw foods that I can see.

1. The dog seems to digest the food better, and their is far less waste product.  In other words less poo.

2. The poo is firm from early morning until evening.  They never have loose stools.  This is the bone content.  We must remember not to over give muscle meat or it can loosen the poops.  A dog fed complete foods may start off the day with a firm stool but by evening it will be runny.

3. The stools are much much smaller.  They are reduced in size by half.

4. The dogs teeth are cleaner because they have to chew the bones. 

5. The dog does not have bad breath.  Most bad breath caused in dogs is by its anal glands.  You would never think it to be true, but it is.  The first thing your vet would do if you took your dog to the vets with bad breath is open its mouth to check no rotting food is inside, no bad teeth, then he would empty the anal glands.  Anal glands are designed to release whilst firm stools are passing by, simply to ease it out.  With complete foods they are not hard enough to push against these glands, there for they do not get released.  There fore they can become blocked, infected.  By giving your dog bone, the bone pushes against the anal gland and it releases the gland.

6. Drinks far less water.  For some reason our dogs drink far less water, there fore do not need to go to the toilet as often. It was very interesting to see the Woody x Darcy litter in 2009 not have a complete obsession for water.  Normally Weimaraner puppies are manic for water, puddles, dirty water.  But not this litter they drank what they needed, and ignored the rest.  Of course we had less wee too. 

7. Skin wow where do I begin. Being a qualified groomer I see dogs daily with dirty, dry, flaky, skin.  Some have serious skin problems.  Baldness.  Dogs on the barf diet have beautiful skin, which is supple, flexible, and seems to be hmm how can I put this springy, not dull.  Soon as they are onto the barf diet the skin changes with in a month to flake less skin.

8. Hair. Well the hair on a barf diet dog is strong, healthy, shiny. I notice their are far less colouration patches on the Weimaraners coat.

9. Content.  The dogs are far more content with their diet, they are far more satisfied through their food.

10. Energy: For a start you will notice your dog is more active on the barf diet, but gradually it settles down.

What must I not feed? :

Load bearing limbs, legs!  Cooked bone.  Tons of offal or muscle meat.  Food that's been left out of the fridge for too long and obviously has gone off.

What about Salmonella?

They say that complete foods can contain just as much salmonella as raw foods.  Be sensible with your raw food and only get out what is required for your dog each day. Buy human grade consumption meats.  Put your food in the fridge.  Do not let it get heated and do not let flies lay eggs in it.  Clean food bowls every single time they are used.

Holidays?

Okay so you are about to take your dog on  holiday in the UK and cant take all this raw food with you. What can you do?  Its very simple natures menu make foil sachets of dog food which is good quality food which you can take with you and give to your dog.  You may want to buy whole sale to get the price down but its great. The dogs love it, and its easy.   http://naturesmenu.co.uk/products/Pouches_for_Dogs/Dog_Food_Pouches/

What fruits or vegetables? 

Pretty much what your dog likes. Although never feed grapes, or raisins in any dogs diet. My dogs are not big vegetable lovers so they do not get much.  They love apple, and they do like carrot.

 http://www.ukvet.co.uk/ukvet/articles/toxicology%20-%20raisins.pdf

I never fed onions but I know some barfers that do.  I never give cows milk as it upsets my dogs.  Although they will have yoghurt on occasion, cottage cheese. 

Health Stories Here are two interesting stories about two animals that I have been told about.  If anyone else has any stories they would like to share then write to me by email and I will start to write them into this diet page.

A cat who had terrible diabetes and was getting sicker by the day.  The vet told the owner in the end to put the cat onto the barf diet as they had tried every other option.  The cat started to get better and in the end after one month of eating raw meats had no signs of diabetes.  This was told to me by my own vet!

A dog who had an under active thyroid was put onto the barf diet and also given a daily amount of spinach or kelp.  Spinach and kelp contains a natural iodine.  By giving the Weimaraner just daily spinach the dogs symptoms vanished. The owner brought from Tesco's frozen spinach and it comes in a small square block. Fed this with the meats, eggs, and cottage cheese.  The dog (Not a Silvestre Dog) became fit and well.

FACT: Not all vets like dogs fed on the barf diet.  This is because vets associate injuries with bone in the stomach or intestine with the diet.  Punctured intestines from hard bone. If infact your dog is a greedy dog which swallows bone whole, do not give bone whole. Give it crushed in the diet with the meat so you wont get any bone accidents.  But in fact most barf diets you can crush bone, or buy it and you wont even know bone is in the meat as its that fine.  Most punctured guts are from dogs that are fed treats of large cooked bones from pet shops. Never do that. Never give large bones to dogs. Natural instinct products come with bone already in it. How easy to avoid bone injuries.

Rachel x

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