mackiemad

my boy gets about 70 grams of tripe/offal/butcher's scraps or meat/sardines/ or a raw egg with half a cup of pro plan sensitive in the evening. unless he he gets training treats during the day in which case the kibble is reduced. if he gets a RMB (usually chicken, turkey or roo) during the day (3-4 times per week) then he only gets the kibble in the evening. he does however tend to 'clean up' after the cats if they don't finish their dinner within half and hour. they get canned fish (usually tuna) and half/half nutrience senior and original kibble. oh and when he visits the horses he consumes as much old horse poo and horse hoof trimmings as his stomach will allow. the fresh horse poo is more important for rolling in than eating...he doesn't visit the horses much anymore!

belgian blue: i've never worried feeding beet pulp because i feed it to my horses as fibre and bulk to push through their guts. by the time it is processed there is little sugar in it, well so the feed suppliers and other horsepeople tell me and my fizzy horse is pretty chill on it so i believe them. however i wouldn't feed a kibble that has it very high up and it can be used merely as a filler...not that i'm saying this is the case with black hawk BUT i've heard that with dogs prone to ear infections or yeast infections beet pulp can encourage this? currently i am feeding a food with no beet pulp in it (mini schnauzer that has had 2 ear infections in 3 years, same ear. both times it has cleared up so we haven't checked to see if there is somethign down there causing it). does anyone know if this is true or is an urban myth? erny: bummer that he's not eating atm. but sounds fab that his poos have been better after the black hawk kibble. keep updating please, i'm interested to know how it turns out- and good luck!

i wanted to go onto eagle pack but wouldn't because of the erratic supply, but have only recently settled my boy on this and it is one of the few foods he actually likes! and for his sensitive tummy it seems to be agreeing with him, no really awful scours. though it's not doing wonders for his coat which i would've expected. so i personally hope the new formula/ingredients don't change the taste too much. anyway i just bought a small bag to wean him onto it and give him a couple of months to see if it agreed with him, so thanks for the info guys, i'll be ordering a bigger bag over the net next i think! edit: for sentence that didn't make sense!

i think most of us WANT to use it! but some of us have dogs that have intolerances or allergies and just want to make sure that the product is 'pukka'. as for me, i'm just a bit of a cyncial person when it comes to dog food companies. and anything that doesn't have much of a label or 'brand name' to protect, can in my mind get away with stuff. plus, i expect my butcher to know where the meat he is selling came from, and as this, i believe, is a small company perhaps i had unrealistic expectations of the same-again i don't mean exact farm just general region. I'm NOT saying this is the case, just that my own cynicism says this might be the case, in some twisted, crazy mackie world! in reality though i am interested and very happy that there is a 100% australian owned and produced dog food available (and may in the future use it) i have got a dog that has finally (hopefully) seemed to settle down a bit on the pro plan sensitive - and my misgivings about that company stem from a different question as to where they source their ingrediants.

if it is just sounds she doesn't like, perhaps you can get a cd or dvd of traffic noises, motors revving, horns beeping etc and play them inside the house. obviously start off not too lound and increase over time. if it is the movement then maybe (if just ignoring her doesn't work, which is what i would do. ignore, drag and then prasie when she is moving forward freely) get your daughter to ride progessively closer past her and by her on all sides on a bicycle? i personally would have her in a sit or drop and try and keep focus whilst the bike is going past. i'm not a behviouralist, but that is how i would first approach it, whilst talking with my instructor- bring it up in class, other puppy owners might be going through the same thing!

i think it isn't good enough to say that the ingredients are sourced from australia (though, a bit WOOT! for the fact they are ) if i asked a question saying where is the lamb from i would actually expect a region, maybe even a breed of sheep that they use because of xyz. same with any ingredient. if they can't be transparent then it raises questions in my mind about how much they know about their own ingredients. i expect a holistic food to be using meat that wasn't given growth hormones, for example, and they cannot promise that, so can they truly promise to be holistic? also, why do they use a meat 'meal' rather than just the meat? i'm not against a meal but i'd like to know why they think that is better or I tend to assume that's all they cold afford or get a hold of (i'm cynical and i am interested in the product, it sounds like people who use it are getting fab results, but questions need to be answered and the process transparent is all...

tenterfield terrier? though i've never met one, just seen them and heard about them. but they are short coat, small, robust... do they mind a wirehaired coat? how about a wirehaired foxy or jrt? or is that too much energy? though i imagine they could keep up and drain energy in the yard with the boxer during the day.

i wash with warm salty water and then apply some tea tree ointment. paw paw is ok, but i find that flies are attracted to it, not so with the tea tree. and i think most cuts probably don't need manuka honey- my rule of thumb is that if it needs manuka it needs a vet cos in that case it is probably deep enough or wide enough to need 'proper' treatment!

love plan b!

but she's not wrong. yes there was a rally in melbourne recently about puppy farms. but have you seen any rally's for intensively farmed pigs? they are smarter than dogs and their conditions are pretty goddam awful. gaylek: pigs are decidely intelligent social creatures who the latest studies all show that they have the mental age of a 3-4 year old human. they cannot barely move around, they don't see the sun and they only have the bars aroudn them to interact with. they are also instinctively clean animals and they have to stand in their own muck. and sure some chickens are getting it better, but free range for laying hens just mens they are all shoved in a shed. free range for meat chooks means they are in a sightly less dense shed. they don't produce the omega 3s and other good vitamins that we are used to getting from our meat unless they can scratch and dig aroudn looking for worms etc - unless they're healthy and happy we don't get the full benefit of their meat. look, i'm not saying she didn't leave out the parents or long term effect on the pup because she did. but what she is saying is that the animals we eat we conviently seem to forget about because it doesn't gel with our need to pay less to eat them. some of them may not be designed to live WITH humans but they are in our care and for our own ends so their lives should not mean any less because they are useful, edible and not often pets.

yay! glad to hear that it has been beneficial for everyone. and at your wake up call!

this probably isn't helpful at all BUT: i have an old cat that has dementia and he needs the DAP plugged in all the time in order to be able to 'settle'. he's always been really affectionate (burmese) and vocal but the last year he would just walk around the house meowing. so we'd put him on our lap or on a bed with a hot water bottle but he just couldn't lie down and sleep. he would spend the entire day wandering the house meowing and often just looking at us, but we couldn't get him to settle. he also lost a lot of weight. nothing was physically wrong with him and he was diagnosed with dementia, so he was on hormone tablets that did nothing but conk him out for a couple of hours but the next day same old thing. we tried the DAP and he is still a bit mad (forgets that he has been given dinner etc) but he will settle and snooze. and he is finally putting wieght back on, though his coat is still abit dry and awful but we are getting there. this may not help, but there was something amiss in his brain and the DAP just allowed him to chill and relax. although he has become an anxious cat because of a neighbourhood tom beating him up once or twice, this other cat also wanders around our property at night and it worries our old man even though he is locked up of a night. (been happening for the same amount of time, our vet thinks that this may have triggered some hormones or inhibited hormones in his brain and so triggered the dementia. but it really is as if he isn't sure where he is sometimes and often doesn't respond to his name, whereas before he would come running when he heard it) anyway, we figured that $40 or whatever the refills are was a pretty good price to pay for his happiness, because he really looked, sounded and WAS unhappy, confused and frazzled before the DAP...

how awful for you, i'd want to be there with him, it must be sending you mad sitting at home and not being able to do anything. though you wouldn't be able to do anything at the vet's anyway. thinking postive thuoghts for him and you... it does sound like a tick to me, but if you say you've been giving him proban then it must be something else. could he have eaten a toxic plant in the garden last night?

that's how i read it ash. or a black lab with a yellow lab. or a short coat collie with a rough collie. in essence they are the same breed that live in similar but different areas of the country. so a kelpie from NSW bred to a kelpie from SA... shortstep: did they say that the population had increased threefold to one hundred? so does that mean there was 22 animals left and THEN the 8, or 30 and then the new 8 cats? and i agree that just because there are 8 new cats it does not mean that any previous problems have been bred out, surely you would need selective breeding and a continuation of new, tested, blood/genes? also the jumping thing could be a learned behaviour from a mother, so if a introduced mother had that behaviour and passed it on to her litter of, say two kittens, then they would display that behaviour, whether or not they had an introduced father or not. whereas the cats that already lived there may never had learned that behaviour and so could not pass it on to kittens. just a thought...? but hey, if it is working then kudos to them.

hey erny my boy didn't like the canidae either, he is currently on the proplan salmon. he likes it well enough but not in love with it... seomone asked somewhere in this thread whether there could be a problem changing from a normal amount of protein to a higher one. if you don't do it carefully and the dog has a propensity there anyway, it can affect the kidneys. when my dog was having steroid injections for a shoulder issue (a course of 4 over two week intervals) my vet reccomended that i try and move him onto a lower protein food. but i had just got him settled on the canidae (though he didn't usually eat much of it, but silly me threw away the bag after decanting into my storage so even if i had wanted to return it i couldn't!) so kept going with that. my dog doesn't have any allergies but he has a sensitve tummy, seems to react to beef (don't they all?!) corn and wheat. aphra, how much is black hawk? how big are the bags? i have heard one or two good thngs about it and was thinking of getting some it if the proplan is less than satisfactory (though atm it is fine, not sure his coat is the best... but his stools are fine, and he is eating it)

thanks boxagirl!

how much daily exercise do boxers want? if exercised in the morning and provided with bones/toys during the day, could one be happy in a townhouse, acess to very secure courtyard and the house whilst the two owners are at work? it would probably be exercised in the evening if it wanted it and also taken to training... (not for me but i'm checking out breeds for someone else)

watch the vic website for when they are doing intakes of new vollies. then you apply, go to a seminar (to make sure that you understand you'll be doing a lot of cleaning or dog walking etc) then they interview you to make sure you are a sensible normal person. you can volunteer in the vet clinic (they are hard possies to get but during kitten season they put on extra vollies), shelter, cattery, pretty much anywhere. once in the system you can often move around as well. so if you start off in kennels and you realise you actually hate walking the dogs then you can ask to be moved to cattery or vet clinic when they have an opening...

nekhbet-you've hit on one of my serious bugbears of animal law in australia. we have a more american system which has a COE, whereas in europe (not so much in england i think?) they have differnt laws stating what is required by different kinds of chicken etc. so we only have organic that has to certfied, whereas all of their level, organic, 'free range' (just bigger sheds) and intensive farms all have to be signed off. anyhoo, he ate his dinner like a monster (something he doesn't always do). was fine last night and positively bouncing off the walls even after our walk this morning. seriously, he was running up and down the hallway, then he's poke his little head into my study and then race off again. generally too much frivolity for me to concentrate so we went for a really really long walk at lunchtime and did some training at the dog park and then a nice long wlak home again. much more chilled now. so all in all, i'd say he's feeling pretty swell, so swell that i think he's trying to tell me that cooked chicken bones are awesome, and that please mum, can't i have more?

i would think that the fat content in the pork bones (i don't feed knuckle bones anyway because i worry about the actual knuckles) would be causing any runny poos after eating them. pork has a high fat content, and fat = slippy in any of the dogs i've had. perhaps change to lamb bones? or turkey necks are awesome. as for the beard, i think if you fix the paw licking (probably an allergy, and just because he didn't used to be allergic to his food, it doesn't mean he can't have become allergic as he matured) then the beard staining will grow out. ETA: when i say lamb bones i mean one that don't have too much fat, my butcher saves the back joints and the shoulder, even some necks if they're not too fatty. lamb can be fatty but i find pork is worse- that may depend on your butcher and where they get their meat from...

there are a few things that i can guarantee will be in this seminar. horses are born to be free therefore any training is doing psycholgical damage. i've hard him before...

ncarter: coudl a whippet deal with the exercise requirements? all those i've met love a good romp but not many would be able to cope with 1/2 hour to 1 and 1/2 hour jog every morning... thanks monah, will keep looking at the ACD. and vizla's are off the list!

well my boy does well on nutrience. though i have been chaging around trying to find something a bit better. so atm he's on proplan salmon, he's been on canidae ALS too. though i'm thinking of going back to nutrience, he loves the eagle pack but it is so hard to get that i don't feed it. he also sometimes gets RMB in the morning and always some offal with his dry for dinner

aw, so good to hear the pepper has a snuggle buddy again! and that she is starting to lighten up on the little fella, after all he hasn't been taught manners before! and i think it was a fab idea to take just the two of them out together for a romp, really helps bond them. honestly spottychic, what you've done wiht tango is darn amazing. imagine him a few months ago trying to put up with a pup or allowing pepper to curl up with him!

thanks guys! ok, so i'll take a deep breath and just monitor him... i hadn't thought of the sharpness of the bone on the way back up *shiver*