Baby Food Question

[LG & Sadie]

I tried to search the food group discussions-but got overwhelmed. I read the guidelines, I swear I did. This topic I am sure has come up before in regard to sick dogs.....but, I am wondering......what if when the dog gets better you keep the dog on the baby food? I will start at the beginning. My Sadie had what my Vet ended up calling some kind of stomach/and intestinal thing. This "thing" taught her not to eat. Because she had both vomitting and diarrhea she just decided to stop food altogether-even her sacred freeze dried liver treats. She drank water throughout, thankfully!!!!! Well, I was on the phone with the Vet-and days passed....yes, days.....finally the Vet said try a jar of baby food meat....she ate it, and has been eating since (five days now) she has baby food rice cereal with green beans, carrots (organic) and a jar of baby food meat (beef, chicken, turkey, ham) We travel with her sometimes and had found her Bravo complete diet a bit of a pain travelling.....so, this has been kind of nice. It's nice to handle, doesn't gross us out, you can buy it everywhere, most importantly she eats it, likes it and tolerates it as well as she did the Bravo complete diet. I should say it took a year to find a diet to work for Sadie-and the Bravo diet did. She had 2.5 years of success with it! Should I be running this question by her Vet, or is this a good place to check it out? I have faith that at least one doodler will point me in the direction I should be heading. If I missed posting Sadie on the snow doodle front page week-you know how serious her not eating has been! We here in New England take our doodles in the snow very seriously! And....it has been so hot!! Thanks in advance!

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

First, Leane, you didn't miss the "snow doodle" post...Adina skipped this week's theme and that's an old slideshow she's rerunning, lol!
You can ask the vet for verification on this, but I am 99% sure that the baby food diet is not nutritionally adequate for dogs for the long term. It isn't meeting the basic vitamin, mineral, and macronutrient requirements for dogs. During illness, it's fine, just as a plain chicken & rice diet diet would be, but neither would be suited for long term use. A veterinary nutrition specialist could probably come up with a way to combine commercial baby foods in order to meet a dog's nutritional needs, but your regular general practice vet couldn't and neither could any of us.
What about the Bravo diet is difficult for travel purposes? Maybe we could help find a solution for that. Or possibly, we could find a canned product that would agree with Sadie that you could use when travelling. Which Bravo product/formula are you using?

[LG & Sadie]

Oh, that is funny! I was thinking-just my luck-favorite topic for photo and I missed it! I missed dirty doodles and thought that was bad....this was just awful! LOL.

Great info to know-Thanks! I quasi suspected it~And, to be honest...the troubles with Bravo complete are more me than anything else. Sadie eats the Bravo complete frozen burgers-served raw (but thawed) (not the balanced burgers which don't have the vitamin/mineral add in's....but the complete burgers which do) 2 of them twice a day plus Wellness Protein-Focused Core Essentials Kibble as a graze. She really isn't a big eater-she actually will save a treat for later. Very interesting gal when it comes to food.

Even when we trained Sadie she was much more interested in praise and affection as a reward than a treat. Which, in some ways made it a little more challenging. Because sometimes she could be stubborn-and kind of give us this, "I can't be bought expression". I find it tough travelling with the frozen Bravo stuff because Sadie doesn't like them thawed until just prior to eating them. Seriously. So, we want the burgers to remain frozen solid-not thaw a little then get re-frozen and freezer burned. That kind of thing. I am guessing the way I am packing them for the 3-5 hour car journey is just not right? I use a cooler, freezer packs (frozen gel ice thingys) etc.

The other trouble is, the raw meat is gross to some of our family/friends....after awhile we have become hardened to it....but, I have sent a few relatives into tailspins I thought they might never recover from.....So, I am thinking.....I probably shouldn't move my dogs items into the home freezer wherever we are staying......even if Sadie should count just as equal as say any other family member! Any ideas?

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

My first thought is to try the canned version of the Wellness Core for travelling. Most dogs who are picky-eaters and not food motivated like wet foods better than dry, and you may find that Sadie is willing to eat it. Canned foods are also easier to digest than dry foods, so she may be fine with that as her solitary food while you're away. If she hates it, we can look at some other brands she might like better.
I personally can't stand canned food, it makes me gag, and I hate dealing with it. But now that my elderly cat is in early kidney failure and needs the moisture of canned food, I had to suck it up, and through repeated exposure, I have become somewhat less repulsed by it, lol.
My other thought is that if Acana (dry food) is available in your area, you might give that a try. It's been great for other FG members whose dogs have sensitive stomachs, including Jane's Guinness, who has been diagnosed with IBS. It's grain free, and most dogs like the taste of it. Jane's been using it for travelling, and she ordinarily feeds Guinness a home-cooked diet. So if a dog who usually eats homecooked dinners will eat this kibble, that's a pretty good endorsement of the taste!

[LG & Sadie]

We tried the Wellness Core canned-it was a bit of a crap shoot except for the fishy one which she hated, excuse the expression-which is odd, I am not a gambler? So, she liked it sometimes like 50-50, other times walked away. She very rarely grazes on her dry-but, I will check out the Acana. If not, maybe I will just re-introduce her Bravo complete slowly....and hope she takes to it again and doesn't associate it with whatever it was that had her so under the weather. All of her labs, fecal etc. were crystal clear.....she didn't pass or vomit anything like rocks or sticks......she is always supervised (a topic for another day...) so, I guess I will call it a stomach, intestinal thingy too~Thanks so much Karen....and Jack too for taste sampling some of these suggestions~