Our pup is getting mainly high quality kibble and soft food once a day. But she also loves raw carrot to chew on, boiled rice with cooked chicken, pasta with lactose free cheese. A puppy dentastick once a day to help the teething. And at present lots of training treats to reward good behaviour.

But she also eats all sorts of unsavoury things during walks Like paper, sticks, crabs (leading to wobbly tummy) so I have to keep an eye on her at all times.

She never never gets scraps or sweet stuff.

She is bursting with energy and loves her kibble, especially if scattered over the floor (she is a cocker spaniel and I was told she needs this to encourage her searching instincts).

Like most dogs she would eat anything given half a chance. Not everything is good for them though. I see our job as owners as making sure they don't.

I fed my beautiful girl ( Lab/Staffie cross)on the BARF diet most of her life- she was rescued & we got her at about 2 years old ( she had been very well fed & loved & given up as owner could no longer walk her).
This stands for Bones & Raw Food- raw bones- never cooked. We did give her raw chicken wings a lot- NEVER cooked. I then made up raw veggie patties once a month & froze them to go with it.
She never had any problems with her teeth, had bags of energy - we did agility for a while- & she lived to 18 years old without a day's sickness before the day she suddenly looked ill & we had to have her put to sleep.
It was a total shock as she had been chasing her ball the day before.

I got the book on this diet & it worked out really easy & very cheap. I see some supermarkets are now selling raw bones- I had to go to a pet shop for them.

I'm sure the booklet is still available. It is an interesting read & although I know it is a bit of a pain to have to make patties up it really doesn't take long & she loved it.

I miss her every day but with 6 young grandchildren this is not the time for another dog. I'll know when the time is right.

The cats get Wellbeloved Oral Care on vet's advice plus another couple of flavours of same brand for variety.

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Hey Lucy, thanks for sharing this information, but I never buy any kind of pet food from the supermarket. I just trust my own made salmon pet food for my dog. But really thanks for sharing this information which so much useful.

Give my dog a bone and he immediately buries it. So that is always a waste.

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I thought that the white dog poo that you used to find was due to dogs being given a lot of bones and having an excess of calcium in their poo - and probably in their bodies too.

Also, anti-fouling regulations mean that poo doesn't hang around on the pavement drying out as it used to.

Not just for dogs - I feed my cat on raw food now, bought in pouches and containing ground up bones. I wish I'd started it when he was a kitten as it might have saved him a few teeth (he has a dental problem). It took me a while to believe that the oral diets I was being sold were a big con - who could actually believe that a diet of biscuits could be good for teeth. I would never feed a pet on commercial pet food again. He's as fit as a fiddle (touch wood) and looks and acts like a kitten at almost 14. The pet food industry is just that - a huge industry which has convinced us all that we don't have the knowledge to feed our pets properly.

My aunt used to own a Heinz 57 variety dog. When asked, she would say, she is a Tibetan Terrier. Well, what do you know, she could see into the future. We never knew there was such a breed back then.

Our bc has always had raw food,meat bones and raw chicken legs. Plus a few biscuits.
She was off her food recently and I tried to tempt her with some bought paté, but she turned her nose up at it!
She's back to eating now.
Her poos have always been hard and white.
Another advantage of eating raw is that with hard stools the dog has to use its anal muscles to expel them. Unused muscles can lead to a condition where the anal sacs become clogged and have to be squeezed out.

I attended a dog first aid course. Vet took the course. He explained the raw food diet is being misunderstood. If you have a good local butcher, or live on a farm, fine. But important not to buy raw meat from supermarkets. It goes through too many processes and they are increasingly seeing dogs with food poisoning because of the trend. I was quite surprised. Having owned dogs for many years, seeing the crap they eat, including, crap! and watching one of mine devour a decomposing mouse last week, that she gulped down before I realised she had it in her mouth. I find this incredible. But that's what the vet said.

My three dogs all have different dried food for health reasons but do get a little veg and meat as well.
They supplement their diet with cow and horse poo if the opportunity arises.

I do have a problem with vets giving nutritional advice. They have a vested interest in selling so called 'prescription diets' because they are under commission from the companies that produce them. I understand that vet training includes very little about animal nutrition and what there is is usually provided by the same companies. I'm sure someone will correct me if I've got this wrong but I prefer to look for more objective information and draw my own conclusions.

Nightowl, one of my cats needed a vet's 'dental' every year until I changed one meal a day to Purina Dental kibble. Since then he has had minimal tartar and a clean bill of health. I can only put this down to the change in diet. My main problem is that he is overweight. He has small portions of bought food but supplements it with daily rodents etc.!

My course wasn't about dog nutrition. It was dog first aid. So the vet had nothing to gain and didn't advise on what to feed. Just what not to feed. So I trusted him. He didn't organise the entire course, he was a guest speaker and covered other first aid aspects. I don't feed dry. I feed butchers loaf (but loaf only) with terrier mix. Bone meal added in the morning, to keep stools firm, so no anal gland expression needed. Then 5 nights, natural yoghurt added in the evening, the other two, sardines. They also get any scraps that are healthy, like fish, meat, well chopped veg. I clean and descale their teeth once a week. And they have dental sticks also. All have lived to a ripe old age so I'm not changing it. I did feed my G.S.D. on Chappie. Not a high quality food but it was the only thing I could find that didn't give him the squirts. I don't buy into expensive dog food, or fads.

Is it okay to give my dog cooked lambs liver occasionally? She does love it!

Supermarket - non-food is harming us let alone dogs - get down the butchers and get the dog a bone.

One for Tricia F I heard a while ago that chicken bones can be lethal for dogs as they splinter easily and pierce the brain.

Thanks Sarah - I've heard about that. She's been eating raw chicken for many years, and I notice she seems to select and discard the bones that might be sharp. After cracking them and eating the marrow inside.
If I give her cooked chicken bones I always remove those which seem to be sharp.ie the thin bone in the foreleg and the 'funnybone'.
But I'll ask the vet about it next time we go.

I did try a dog biscuit diet once, had to eat dried dog biscuits for one meal each day, never did me any harm. Except one day I sat down in the middle of the road to lick my willy and got run over.

Dog foods in supermarkets contain sugar? Why? Because it's addictive and it's hoped that your pooch will reject other brands for the sugar laden ones. Even at the cost of your dogs teeth becoming rotten and ill health!

Same with the kitty food! Sugar Sugar Sugar!!

Are dogs living longer these days than previous years though? Put things in perspective. Blimey.

I don't like supermarket dog food, I would say the same about cat food. My family always had dogs and I do as my parents did, I feed my pets with boiled chicken meat and some veggies, we had no problems with that. Though I must admit that sometimes I give them joint supplements like this every winter.

Many years ago when I worked on a magazine which dealt with Small Farms and Lifestyle Block living, I was asked to research whether dogs could live, healthily on a vegetarian diet.

Many of our readers and subscribers were vegetarian and this was a question which came up frequently.

When I spoke to the vets in our area (quite a large area around the North Island) and various farmers and lifestylers, I was quite suprised to learn dogs don't need meat at all.

They are, apparently, much healthier on a diet of vegetables and cereals and get far less arthritis in old age if kept meat-free.

As a (sort of) bonus, their pooh doesn't smell as bad either as it is the odour of putrifying meat which makes that characteristically foul dog-pooh smell.

My dogs are all raw fed and have been for decades, their food comes from a supplier who collects it straight from the abattoir. It's delivered in one pound packs, every two months and goes straight into the dogs freezer until needed.