Feeding canned and dry together

jessie's mom -  the frozen lamb nugget was from Nature's Variety!  i tried the solid gold freeze dried raw this morning, he ate the wet that was mixed in with it and left the rest.  i had to leave for work after our walk so i left the dry in the bowl and i'll see what's there when i get home.  i also have a sample of the nature's variety kibble that has the raw meat coating, i'm going to try that.  thankfully my dog does not show any signs of allergies, just soft poops and weird eating habits.  so i think he's just picky.  i was told that i was making the problem worse by giving him something better if he doesn't eat his food, so now he holds out until i give him something else.  he's a very smart dog.

I use canned food to offer my allergy dog Ben some variety that I can't afford to offer in raw form - ie, rabbit, duck when mine are in short supply, lamb when mine are all sold (lol).  He can also tolerate canned beef but not kibble-processed beef for some reason, so that gives me another feeding option for him - though beef is easy to find in the supermarket so that's not usually a problem.

He takes a slew of medications and supplements with every meal, so using the canned food, mixed with a little kibble and about half a can of green tripe, makes a dish that is too varied in texture to pick through, looking for the pills.  He simply will not take meds otherwise, so we've been doing this for over a year now.  With the kibble, chunks of gristle in the green tripe, and the yummy squishy stuff, he hasn't noticed the pills, thank goodness!

This is in supplement to his normal raw meals, which are fed on the "prey model", so I can't really address whether doing this long term would be harmful or not.  I think the bones/raw meat are what clean his teeth and he doesn't get enough kibble or canned stuff to mess up his nutritional balance.  I like to think it helps, actually - he's gotten more energetic since being on the NB kibble, probably from the available carbs which all my other working dogs get normally in their diets.  It wouldn't be something that someone would notice that wasn't using their dog to work, however.

  He can also tolerate canned beef but not kibble-processed beef for some reason

 
 He's probably allergic to chicken fat; most kibble uses it as the fat source.

You are probably right.  Even if it's not in the formula he can react to traces so it wouldn't take much.

Poor ol' Ben.  We are a chicken free household now - I suppose that's just as well after my experience with the chicken industry!

I didn't know that about canned food either, for some reason I thought that dry was better, but the canned being good for them makes sense.  I think I will start giving both my dogs canned and dry together, right now I am feeding my toy Poodle both because I want him to put on weight.  But maybe my Cavalier would benefit from canned too.  Glad that I read this topic!
 
~Renee

I think I have finally found the right combo that both my dogs like. It is the Natural Balance Salmon and Sweet Potatoes. They like both the dry and the canned and I can get it at Petsmart.
 
I had given them some Nutro Turkey, Lamb and Pasta, oooh boy, gaseous effect!! LOL 

  That's good news; I hope it works for your dogs. You're lucky; our local PetsMart doesn't carry anything in the holistic line except for Blue Buffalo; they just started carrying it and only have a few feet of shelf space for it.

I just bought my dogs some Eagle Pack canned food, and I mixed it in with their dry food - they totally loved it!  Hoping that they do OK on it, it'd be nice to get more weight on my Poodle, and he gobbled it right down.

The Eagle Pack canned food is very good quality; they're 65 to 75% meat;
 
                                   [linkhttp://www.eaglepack.com/pages/ep_canned.html]http://www.eaglepack.com/pages/ep_canned.html[/link]
 
I used to feed Jessie Nutro Natural Choice and the first ingredient in all their canned foods was broth or water; the first ingredient in all of Eagle's canned foods is meat except for the liver, chicken and rice and the can says to feed it as a mixer only, so I think Eagle is more careful about nutrition than Nutro.