What Your Puppy Eats
We do not feed kibble/dog food. We feed our dogs and puppies human grade food bought fresh and produced in Hungary, we buy in quantity and freeze it. It is more time consuming, but we think the benefits are worth it. It is just as expensive to feed the highest quality dog food as it is to feed a raw/homemade diet. The main advantage of dog food is convenience for the breeder/owner. It takes much less time to toss some kibble in the bowl than to make quality meals, but this changes once the puppies are old enough to eat mostly meat. Feeding our adult dogs takes about the same time as it does to feed kibble, it is not difficult once you get used to it and we think our dogs and puppies are worth the extra effort.
From birth through the first 4 weeks of life, our puppies rely solely on their mothers to feed them. We prepare our bitches to do the job well by putting a bit of extra weight on them before they whelp. After whelping we feed our mother dogs 3 or more times a day, twice the amount they would normally eat, till the pups are 5 weeks old.
At 4 weeks of age we begin to feed the puppies ourselves. We wean them totally off their mothers milk at 6-6.5 weeks of age so they are eating and drinking water entirely on their own when they go to their new homes at 8 weeks of age. Leaving us is a stressful event and compounding it with stopping the comfort of nursing from their mothers at the same time we feel is just too much stress to put on an 8 week old puppy.
From 4 weeks of age we provide clean, fresh water continually. We have to resupply it many times a day as the puppies find the water bowl to be a source of entertainment and a means to cool off on hot days. We wash our water bowls every day as germs such as campylobacter are known to exist in water bowls. We use only stainless steel bowls for both food and water as they are the safest and easiest to clean.
The first meals we feed to the 4 week old puppies are soft ones. We feed them at first once a day and then every other day we add a meal till at the end of the first week they are eating 3 meals a day. We usually feed cooked rice and liver creme (a product made for humans) for the first few days. We sometimes add homemade vegetable or meat soup and leftover pasta. The next step is to either smash chicken necks with a hammer or cut them to very small pieces with a garden clipper and mix them with cooked rice and water. The meals in the first week or two usually end with the puppies having more food on them than in them, but this is their learning period and by the time they are weaned, they are able to eat with almost no rice grains leftover for the hopeful sparrows. We clip the necks into bigger and bigger pieces until they are able to eat small whole chicken necks at about 7-8 weeks of age. We continue to feed cooked rice at every meal, mixed with shredded or cooked fruits/veggies once a day, we also feed canned tuna, raw eggs with the shells crumbled, a kelp supplement, garlic, fresh parsley, lightly cooked beef heart and liver, and other things we can find at the market to provide them with the wide range of nutrients and protein sources that dogs need. We wash the bowls after every meal. We also serve the food warmed to the puppies till they are 8 weeks old.
The puppies in the 3 pictures above are 4-5 weeks old and able to eat smashed chicken necks easily.
The bowl of puppy food on the left contains cooked rice, homemade pea soup made from fresh peas grown in our garden and chicken necks cut into pieces. This is for 6-7 week old pups.
The food in the group of 4 bowls on the left is made from cooked rice, homemade vegetable soup and chicken necks cut into pieces. You can see how small are the pieces in the top left corner bowl, pictured before mixing. This food was made for 5 week old pups so the pieces are quite small.
Once the puppies are eating well we start to use a clicker and "click" as they get to their bowls. This prepares them for clicker training should owners wish to use this method. We also call the puppies to eat "puppy, puppy, puppy" so that the owners will have a way to call their puppy to them once they go home. If we know names that they will be called, we use them at other times as well to call them. We also play specially made puppy sound CD's while they are eating and playing to habituate them to a wide variety of sounds such as gun shots, fireworks, children playing, babies crying, airport noises, heavy machinery and household noises.
Additionally we provide fresh beef 'knuckle' bones for the puppies to chew on. These bones and other similar fresh, large raw bones, provide many benefits for not only puppies, but all dogs. They help to keep teeth and gums healthy, give exercise to muscles, teach eating skills and provide a positive source for chewing which puppies need, especially when teething. Mental health is important in dogs too and bones provide an outlet for dogs to use energy constructively, rather than chewing your shoes or digging up the garden. Bones exercise the mind as well as the body, as the dog has to think about how to chew on the bone and has to learn how to hold it. Mudis use their front legs very efficiently with bones of all sizes.
Dogs are smart and we think humans are too and if you had a choice, which bowl of food on the left would you choose to eat? We thought it would be a no-brainer for dogs too, but just for fun, we did a raw versus kibble preference test with one litter of 6 week old puppies. There were 6 puppies in the litter, 3 black, 3 merle. We borrowed some kibble from a friend and placed it into a bowl in between two bowls of the normal raw food our puppies are fed. We then let the puppies out of a nearby pen and let them go to whatever bowl they wanted. As usual they all went to the closest bowl first, but then began their usual game of musical bowls going back and forth to the two raw food bowls, passing right by the kibble bowl without even a sniff. The kibble was returned unharmed to its' owner. If you feed kibble, perhaps this is a test you should try at home too! We encourage all dog owners to at least try the raw diet for their dogs for 6-12 months. If you do not see any improvement in your dog, then go back to kibble, but you won't know if you never try.
