Thursday 12 March 2009

Barking Up the Right Street

Our custom has always been to buy good quality - read expensive - dog food in large quantities i.e. four /five sacks at a time and decant the sacks into food bins - read dustbins. The problem with that custom is it doesn't transfer easily to life aboard a narrowboat. One, there is not the space for large food bins and two, there is transportation difficulties in getting large sacks back along a towpath to the boat and that is if you can actually find a retailer of pet supplies anywhere near a canal.
So for the four months that we have been living aboard Caxton, dog food has been whatever I can get from the supermarkets in modest size sacks and that has frequently been Bakers. And Bakers is just fine as far as Fletcher and Floyd are concerned but then F&F are Labradors and anything vaguely masquerading as F O O D is consumed PDQ!

No, the dogs thought the content of their dinner bowls was just dandy, it was me that was getting concerned about a dog food that had bright green kibble and bright orange kibble amidst 'chewy bits' in yet another luminous colour. If I wouldn't eat food with these colourings in why was I feeding them to my mutts? The nutritional value of some of these add-ins is highly questionable according to several websites I have recently consulted. So I have avowed not to buy this kind of product again, instead I have gone for Barking Heads which contains no artificial additives at all.

Of course I have now to resolve how I get supplies when we move permanently aboard Caxton in a couple of months time and then where do I store it? Back to the drawing board then Einstein..

5 comments:

James said...

We had a similar problem when moving onto Kestrel and I settled on a small blue barrel like the one on the lower right hand side in this picture:

http://www.keyonline.co.uk/open-top-kegs_344442002010265276.html

It contains most of a 15 kg bag of the Beta food Jess eats and its airtight so keeps the food fresh for the month or so it takes her to eat slightly more than her own weight in kibble.

Nb Yarwood said...

Thanks James. I have an airtight container that I think will fit under the stairs aboard Caxton, the problem will be in sourcing the food. I will have to plot where pet food suppliers are in relation to the canals and shop acordingly me thinks...
Lesley

Anonymous said...

Blue and Lou also have a mixed diet on board (greyhound food at home) - their favourite so far is James Wellbeloved food which is organic etc etc. Pets at home stock it so it may be easier to get hold of.
Sue

Anonymous said...

check out "Chudleys". it's kibbles designed for Labradors, and they have stockists all over the place.
love the blog. hope Floyd gets well soon.

Anonymous said...

Hi there, I have just stummbled upon your blog site, very nice! I see Floyd is enjoying Barking Heads, lovely real food isn't it! My hound loves it and looks gorgeous on it too. Must be all the good bits they put in and the bad bits they don't. They are very helpful though should you need any help at all just email enquiries@barkingheads.co.uk and they will get back to you very quickly. Keep up the river life!