There’s a load of stuff posted on dog food. Lots of people will tell you their opinion. But what you need to know WHY a breeder feeds or recommends a certain diet.
I was talking to an older breeder of purebred dogs about the health of her chosen breed.
She mentioned a few problems, so I asked her about a fatal inherited disease that I had read was common in her breed.
She didn’t seem to want to answer at first, and asked me a few questions.
Then she said that that was an old dog book that I had read, and that the disease USE TO BE one in her breed.
I asked about the disease.
It was a disease which somehow prevented the puppy from getting the nutrition out of the food that it was eating.
So that, while all the other puppies would thrive on what they were fed, the affected puppies would slowly die of malnutrition -not because the food was bad, but because the dog’s digestion was bad.
Shades of Pottenger’s cats!
I asked her when the disease was last seen in the breed.
She said breeder’s dogs didn’t have it anymore, but sometimes a pet puppy would still die of it.
I asked if a person could look at a litter of puppies for sell, and know which were affected?
She said that regular people could not, but that the experienced breeders could, because they had watched it develop and knew what to look for.
I asked if she would be able to make sure that I didn’t buy one of these affected puppies, and she said that she wouldn’t go shopping for a puppy with me, but if I brought the puppy over to her house, she would tell me if it was affected or not.
She said, because it was a nutritional problem, the puppy slowly got sicker and sicker before dieing.
I could tell, that she didn’t want to talk about it, so I didn’t push – the conversation was spread out through several conversations. But I did understand, by what she had said, that she must have had dogs that had produced affected puppies.
I got up the nerve to ask: “What happened to the disease?”
She pretended not to understand. I reminded her that she had once said that the disease use to be common, and now was rare. (The disease was ‘cured’ before genetic testing for dogs.)
She finally said . . .
A dog food company had come out with a new brand of dry dog food. And that affected dogs, fed this food, did NOT die of malnourishment!
So, the disease was NOT cured. It was just controlled.
Although I will not mention a product name here, it is a dry dog food that you that you can buy in most stores that specialize in selling pet foods.
The dog food is NOT marketed for dogs with inherited digestive problems – if it were, could the breeder you bought your puppy from recommend it, without your knowing that she had sold you a puppy with an inherited health problem?
The breeder just says that it is a good dog food brand, and her health guarantee is void if you don’t feed this one brand.
When I heard this, I knew that this wasn’t the only breed with this problem, because I knew there had to be a reason, like some cover up, for so many breeders insisting that puppies they sell be fed certain foods.
I know that some of these show breeders do not like dogs – they would NOT be doing it out of concern for the future of the puppies that they sell. (To some dog show people, the dog show is a game they play to win, the dogs are just something they use to win the game.)
But then I talked to a dog owner, and she said, that she knew someone whose dog had died of this disease recently.
I mentioned the expensive dog food. She said the dog was fed this, and it still died.
I went back to the older breeder, who said that yes the dog food would save the puppy, but after awhile, the dog usually died of it, and they never were healthy, even on the expensive dog food.
It seems the dog food made up for some of the nutrients that the puppy was unable to extract from it’s food, but that other trace elements were not in the food in quantities enough to save the dog. The dog just died slower.
One breeder, at a show, said that affected puppies only died if pregnant – the nutritional strain killed them. (Blame the victim).
Another breeder said that male dogs died of it too. And that spaying, with the stress of surgery, and the sickly dog’s inability to recover from the operation, would often kill the female dog.
I tend to believe the last two, as the “Blame the victim” dog breeder once told me that she had little trouble selling affected puppies (with a different inherited disease) because the people who bought the puppy did not know what to look for – they interpreted the puppy’s lack of energy and pleading looks as a gentle puppy, not a sick and dying puppy.
And that veterinarians usually didn’t know what to look for (like the rare disorders that Dr. House treats – the veterinarian might only see pets with this disease once or twice in his lifetime).
She also said when their puppy’s disease got advanced enough and the puppy died, the owners usually thought the dog died from being poisoned.
And that veterinarians sometimes guessed this too, as the symptoms mimicked some kind of poisoning. (Veterinarians are not trained to do the advanced medical tests that hospitals can do for people).
I didn’t think that was very nice. But to some people, it’s great, they unload a sickly dieing puppy for good money, and then get off free. And nobody can use a dead dog for breeding, and thereby take customers away from them. Grrrrr.
If you think that is a rare case, then you have no idea just how many inherited diseases are in purebred inbred dogs.
Remember the experienced breeder might sell puppies/dogs nearly every weekend – the people buying a puppy might have never bought a puppy before, and might only buy a few dogs ever.
When a breeder recommends a special diet for a puppy, ask “Why?”.
Know that breeders may wait until you have bought the puppy, and are leaving before mentioning the special diet the puppy should have.
If you say that you have changed your mind, that with this new information, you don’t want the puppy, be prepared to hear the breeder say that she doesn’t use regular a receipt, where she can refund your money and sell the puppy to someone else;
-she uses “papers” that only arrive one per puppy, and that she can’t take the puppy back because it would take weeks to straighten out the paper work,
-and to get new papers for the puppy that you decided NOT to buy –
-and by that time the puppy would be too old to sell, and she doesn’t want to babysit the puppy for another month before selling it – just waiting on the papers.
Might be best to ask the breeder what they feed their dogs, and why? Expect smaller breeds to often be fed more expensive dog food.
Just my opinion, but I’d question large breeds who have to be fed dog food that costs more than steak, or who can not be fed dog food and still survive.
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Can you think of a less appealing name for a dog food diet than “barf”?
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