|
|
Post by McCuddles on Dec 6, 2016 22:03:14 GMT
What are your thoughts on this dog food... www.breakthroughdog.co.uk/breakthrough-ingredients/I'd never heard of it before until I just read of it on a Reactive Dog group on Facebook, it's claims are to change your dogs behaviour through diet and to calm your dogs behaviour by increasing seratonin. At first I thought rubbish, however we all know the negative effects the cheaper nasty foods can have on behaviour, so why not the other way around? Looking at the ingredients list it lost me at potato and poultry meal. It's not on allaboutdogfood. Protein levels are 18%, some folk say that higher protein levels can have an adverse affect on a dogs behaviour. Dotty has always been fed orijen since about 12 months old, and she has many reactive issues. Not sure they could be fixed by this miracle dog food though!! |
|
|
|
Post by caz2golden on Dec 6, 2016 23:55:23 GMT
I can not really advise on quality of this specific food. Hopefully someone like gypsy or bextull will be along shortly. They might also know if it is good for behavioral issues. My question would be what is specifically in this food that helps with behavior? My first impression of ingredients is meat source is not named (poultry could be turkey, chicken duck.....) and most of the first 5-6 contents is not meat based. Though I do not have the problems with my dogs that it sounds like you might have with Dotty I did notice a difference in behavior when I changed from dry/wet to raw. My dogs became less hyper. In my dogs case probably the protein and fat content went up but the carbs went down. Therefore I do agree with you that diet can influence behavior. I can however not comment as to if protein, fat or carbs have the biggest influence on a reactive dog. What might be worth looking at is the benefits of turkey meat. Someone brought it to my attention in relation to one of my dogs being scared of fireworks. Turkey meat supposedly contains a decent amount of an amino acid called tryptophan. In theory this amino acid helps to produce serotonin in the body. May be worth considering trying a turkey based treat or perhaps a food that contains a reasonable percentage of turkey? |
|
|
|
Post by bextull on Dec 7, 2016 20:27:47 GMT
In short, I wouldn't feed it. Expensive and not all that great from an ingredients point of view.
Bad food can have negative effects on behaviour, that much is true. So we can definitely assume that feeding good food will have beneficial effects on behaviour. The same principle applies to people, cats, lemurs, rabbits, birds and so on.
As the for the food itself, not very impressive.
Composition: Potato; Poultry Meal; Tapioca; Sweet Potato; Naked Oats; Barley; Poultry Fat; Egg; Beet Pulp; Digest; Whole Linseed; Fish Oil; Lucerne Concentrate; Salt; Limestone; Dicalcium Phosphate; MOS; FOS; Methionine; L-Tryptophan
Very little meat (although it'll likely be chicken or turkey). Plenty of potato, tapioca, oats and barley.
Methionine and Tryptophan are both essential amino acids so will be in all dog foods anyway. However, these do both have a calming effect on the brain, both encouraging the production of serotonin. These guys want to market their food for stressed dogs (and stressed owners), so adding these makes sense.
Tryptophan is found in turkey but it's also found in chicken, eggs, oats, peanuts, milk and banana to name a few.
Methionine can be found in nuts, chicken an green veg to name a few.
MOS and FOS are prebiotics and help with gut flora and therefore improve general well being and health - which will make animals feel better in themselves (one could argue that dogs with gut problems will be more reactive because they always feel uncomfortable).
Analytical Constituents: Protein: 18%, Fat Content: 11%, Crude Fibre: 2.8%, Inorganic Matter: 7%, Moisture: 10%
Very low in protein for my liking. Yes, protein can be converted into energy when needed but the body will use other sources (namely carbs and fat) before resorting to using protein. And this food contains more than enough carbs to supply the energy. On top of this, the protein is likely to be of low biological value given that 5 of the main ingredients are vegetable/grain based.
Protein is essential for growth and repair, hormone and enzyme production and regulation of metabolism (this is just a small number of things.
It's pretty much average percentages for everything else (fat, maybe a tad lower than I'd like).
There are definitely things in the food that would help with reactivity and stress. However, the actual range of ingredients is quite poor. I'd sooner feed a better (and cheaper) food and add my own additions. There probably is a cheaper alternative out there, almost identical to this one but with a company that just haven't copped the "reactivity" marketing aspect yet.
As for high protein foods causing reactivity? It could be possible. As I said, protein can be used as energy so it can't be completely ruled out. However, many people jump on the "protein is the problem" brigade before they ever look at the rest of the diet (or even at the actual behavioural management aspect).
Though, I will say that I'm not a huge fan of orijen. It's incredibly high in protein and fat and I have issues with them labeling it as "biologically appropriate". On top of that, I've encountered very few people whose dogs have had no problems with the food. All I can say is, it definitely didn't suit my own dog.
|
|
|
|
Post by barley on Dec 7, 2016 20:48:41 GMT
It's an interesting concept, but I would think if any results were seen with it, then it'd probably be a placebo affect kind of thing. I can't see anything special in the ingredients that would specifically calm a dog? I'd heard that turkey has that amino acid in that can possibly help with calming/relaxing dogs, so I was interested to see if there would be any change in Alfie's new found firework/noise phobia when he started on his new food which is turkey based. There wasn't (but I wasn't expecting there to be, was just curious!). I guess if a dog is changing from Bakers/Wagg to this then maybe there would be a change in calmness levels?! But just because it's a better/more natural food with less additives? There's a Royal Canin food called Calm which is along the same lines, I'd never heard of it until a dog came in at work with a bag of it. www.royalcanin.co.uk/products/dog/canine-veterinary-diet/calm-cd-25/ |
|
