Coming over to the dark side with 12 week puppy?

[Katie]

Bonnie is 13 weeks on Thursday, and eats Nutro Natural Choice Large Breed Puppy, and has an occasional raw bone.

We are whole food vegans and never eat processed food. Yesterday hubby looked at Bonnies kibble and said...why are we feeding her this? Answer...I have no idea.

Obviously as vegans we know all about Bramble (vegan boarder collie who lived to be 27 years old) and what she ate, but I don't mind cooking meat for Bonnie. Hubby is supportive and will help.

Is 12 weeks too young to do home cooking, it doesn't seem hard, meat and vegis in a pan with some stock. Serve with brown rice or other boiled grain. Add a bone now and again, some fruit for treats and all is good. Obviously mix up the fruit and vegis but I am quite up on the nutrient content of most fruit and veg, and I have read the list of 'not for dogs' food on the net.

But......Is this good enough for a baby? Should I make one meal a day kibble?

I live on the South Island of NZ, and don't have much choice of dog food ()hills, Nutro, royal canin is about it here) but I can get Orijen by mail order (at over NZ$100 inc postage for 6kg) and also Ziwi peak. Also K9 Natural make a frozen or dehydrated raw food. Orijen is going to be too expensive except for emergencies, and we still have half a sack of Nutro......

So home cooking would actually be the easiest option....local butcher, local grass fed meat is standard here...you pay more for grain fed I noticed in the supermarket!

But is she too young? What to do?

Switch to homemade food?
Carry on with the Nutro?
Mix both?
Take out a mortgage to buy Orijen?
Run screaming for the hills!

Katie

Ps on the beach yesterday she was tucking into fresh mussels like there was no tomorrow!

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Yes, that's the one I looked at, the dehydrated raw diets. Much better than the Ultrapet or Nutro. 

[Deborah Brown]

What about ziwipeaks?  It is a NZ based food, raw but air dried kibble.  It is pretty expensive and I use it as training treats but I bet it is available where you are.

http://www.ziwipeak.com/

[Katie]

Yes, ziwipeaks is here, but as you say expensive.

BUT we have been talking, giving bonnie good food now could save heaps in the future with her health. The Internet being the wonderful place it is, we have found a small importer of Oijen and Acana ( and a few others) they deliver for free NZ wide, and undercut the big distributors.

We checked where they were and discovered to our amazement they live less than 500metres from us!!!

We have left a message and I hope to pop round this evening. We will also be moving the cats from Iams to Orijen thanks to what we have learnt on this board.

Hubby was against spending too much on dog food when we first got Bonnie, ( you know, when I was a boy dogs....etc...,) but I didn't persuade him to change his views....Bonnie did! Talk about daddies girl!

Thank you again for all your help.

Katie and spoilt pup Bonnie ;)

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

I'm very glad to hear this. :)

[Katie]

Thank you Karen for all your help. :)

Katie and Bonnie

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

No thanks necessary, I'm happy to help. Please let us know how things go. :)