^Her hips must be pretty good! Don't Labs have a lot of hip displasia issues? Half our bullies did - oddly enough the females. Our males so far have not had the same troubles.(*knocks on wood*)
They're known for hip problems. Ours are doing well so far. We try to keep them in shape, the extra weight can cause hip issues. We've gotten 9.5 lbs off of Rupert as of this past Saturday. He's 94.5 right now, I'll get him down to 90 by the end of the summer, which believe it or not would be what the vet suggested as he is such a huge Lab. We fed him puppy food too long and were dumb enough to feed him what the bag told us to.
Dog food bags are tools of pet food companies who want you to buy more pet food! We work pretty hard to keep our current bulldog at 55lb - the breed standard. All his siblings are 70lb monsters. Beautiful slobbery monsters but as spoiled as we wish we could let our Max be. We lost our others before they were 10 yers old - our vet said they shouldn't get sausag-y! We'd much rather have Max around a long time even if he can't have all the snackies he wants.
I had a vet tell me the exact same thing a few months back. We currently feed our dogs Nature's Recipe, with Helena getting the large breed puppy recipe. They get a cup each in the morning and evening, along with chopped up veggies - carrots, string beans, cabbage, etc. If we go on an adventure on the weekend, I'll give her a small mid day meal. Rupert is still on a diet, so none for him. The nice thing about the vegetables is that we never throw out rotten produce anymore. Plus they have a 'seconds' area in the produce section at our supermarket. Stuff that's marked down as it's not up to their usual quality, but fine for a dog.
I've heard of a veg dog food that uses bulgher (sp?) wheat, rice and cauliflower and broccoli. It seems like that would smell bad after a few days but our Max will eat all of those and love carrots too. It took us longer than it took him to decide the little baby carrots made a good doggie snack! He's currently on a diet of Science Diet's KD (kidneydiet) and rice. He gets urpy and leaves us presents all over the house on other dog foods. We haven't tried any greens with him yet - do yours eat lettuce and such?
I will regularly give them zucchini, celery, string beans, and cabbage as far as green go. I've given them spinach a couple times when it gets wilty. They like it. Lettuce, not so much.
Max does like string beans. Will def give the others a try! In spite of the bacon jokes I make here our veg is never around long enough to go bad - it never occurs to me to give him greens - will give it a whack. Thanks!
Speaking of dog food, and vegetarian dog food in particular, we recently transitioned our dogs (on the vet's recommendation) to Purina HA (hypo-allergenic), which has a soy protien base. I wasn't too sure about this move, but we've been through everything and our guys (especially the chocolate) are just allergic to everything, it seems. We had been feeding venison and potato HA, then duck and sweet potato, and they still had issues. So, we decided to give this a try (after checking it out online.) I have to say, it seems to be doing really well by them both. No more ear infections, no weepy eyes, not chewing on the feet, and most importantly, no more diarrhea. We used to supplement our guys' diets with veggies and other foods, but discovered they're allergic to green beans and eggs, don't like carrots, are not fans of leafy things, and cabbage makes them fart. So, it's just the kibble for now, with a fish oil supplement. Ah, kids ....
The cabbage gives them what my wife lovingly refers to as the 'poo-toots.' Foul as they may be, they are an excellent early warning system of things to come. I always associated the yeasty ears with the fact Rupert loves the water and has floppy ears. And the yellow snot pearls on his eyelids as being from allergies. I'll have to look into this further.
The ear thing can definitely just be realted to water and floppy ears, but Kodi's were persistent. We basically spent October through March treating him for ear infections but, now that we've switched food, it seems to finally be gone. It's a common side-effect of food allergies.