Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

wordless Wednesday

My Greyhound part #3 Dog food and poop expert

The basic principal is simple what comes in must come out at some point !!

When we first got Bentley we thought food was going to be quite easy. Buy a big bag of descent quality kibbles, feed it to dog, dogs is happy, then dog poops. In our head, that was pretty much the whole story. Pretty simple, no big deal. Shirley, from Greyhound rescue Quebec even gave us a bag of food that most greyhounds like and do well on. So we were good right? But She did tell us that greyhounds are known for their sensitive stomach, we just didn't know how much.

The first few days were pretty straight forward, 2 cups of kibbles twice a day and don't let the dog run before and after his meal, no worries. But the picking-up after your dog thing didn't go all that good. Not that we didn't carry bags or that we didn't want to pick it up... The stools were just way too soft to be picked up. But we were told that it might take a week or two to stabilize the dog to it's new retirement diet. After a week, he was indeed making progress on the firmness side, so it was looking good. It was also time to put Bentley on the scale to see how he was doing. We knew his racing weight was 80 pounds, so we had figure that 2 pounds over or under should be a pretty nice weight for him. But, big surprise, he weighted in at 73.9 pounds, he needed to put some pounds on. So we thought," No problem, we will just feed him more kibbles..." WRONG !!! We then learned that there is such a thing as feeding to much kibbles. We quickly realize that the extra kibbles were going almost right through :(

That's when we determined, after some phone calls and research on the web, that we needed to give our greyhound something else then his usual food for him to put on the extra pounds. So I needed to cook for the dog ! Don't get me wrong, I love to be in the kitchen but I did not imagine one minute that I would be cooking (it's really more overcooking then cooking) rice, pasta and mash potatoes for my dog ! And since they have sensitive stomach, I tried one thing at a time. We started with some well overcooked mushy rice, although Bentley did put some weight on, it did not have a very good effect on his digestive system. Then, after a week or two, came the pasta still very overcooked thank you very much !! We tried several kinds, but they did not help to put some weight nor firmed up the mushy poop. Then we gave the mash potatoes a try and we finally started to see some positive effects. We then added some boiled ground beef and voilà, he started to put on some pounds and kept it ! So finally after almost two months, he is now up to 78 pounds and we can pick-up after him without leaving a trace !!

Although it takes a bit more time and caring then a normal dog for a retired greyhound to become fully comfortable in a house,it is well worth it. They make really "greyt" loving, quiet, gentle house pet and once settled they will be greytfull to you for saving their live.

On a final note. I have been ask so many times what happens to racing greyhound when they are done running. If you watch this video, you will have a general idea of the industry. Beware that some of the footage can be tough to watch, especially if you have a retired greyhound sleeping on the coach next to you....

Cheers :-)