How About Some Stew? #Chewy Influencer

Being a Chewy Influencer, I've had the opportunity to try some dog foods and treats that I'd heard of from other dog parents and I've also discovered some new brands of which I was totally unaware. That's been part of the fun for me and it's the very best part as far as my dogs are concerned.

Several of the new discoveries have impressed me so much that I've either added them to our rotation or made a note of them to include them in the future. This month we were introduced to a another new to us brand, Dave's Dog Food.

Now the name Dave's Dog Food reminds me of a truly awful dirty joke I know about Joe's Bar and Grill. I won't retell that particular joke here on the family oriented blog. And strangely, shortly before I met Rob I was dating a guy named Joe who owned a bar and grill. Oh well, my point is that I'm not overwhelmed with the name Dave's Dog Food. It reminds me of a joke.

As with any unfamiliar dog food, I googled it to read all the available info. Dave's site is humorous and I'm sure he's a nice man who would be fun to have a beer with, but I'm not sure how much he knows about dog food. The one thing I did like was that he tells on his site just where each variety of dog food is made. Because the food got some good reviews on other sites, I decided to give it a try.

We tried Dave's Pet Food Stewlicious Grain Free Fisherman Stew. On the can it says " with lots of fish". You know how my pack loves fish! This food has salmon and sweet potatoes, blueberries, raspberries, tomatoes other yummy stuff, all in fish broth. What it doesn't have is corn, wheat, soy or gluten.

Well, you can certainly see that there is lots of fish.

Now for the big test. This time my four Portie girls were selected to be the taste testers.

So how is it Bailey?

Norma Jean?

Lola?

Tess?

As you can see they were much too busy eating to answer. It was a unanimous, great!! So now it's back to me, would I buy Dave's Dog Food again? I don't know. There are some really wonderful dog foods out there that give me a more confidant feeling. This may be one of the truly great ones, but I just don't have enough info, so I'm leaning toward NO. I didn't find anything really negative about this food and my dogs liked it and had no bad reactions to it. I'm trying to not let the name turn me off, but I'd just like to know more about it.

Chewy provided us with a case of Dave's Fisherman Stew at no cost to us in exchange for our honest review.

A Fancy Restaurant In A Can # Chewy Influencer

Hi Everybody,
Have you all heard of 'terducken'? Imagine you feed a chicken to a duck, then you feed the fat chicken filled duck to a turkey.  Then you cook and eat the whole big fat bird. There you have a terducken, sort of. Well, when we got this new food from Chewy this month, we thought we were going to have a nice terducken dinner, but it was much better than that.

This month we're trying Taste of the Wild Wetlands Grain Free. It has turkey and duck and chicken but there's so much more.

Mom said that Mackey and I could be the first ones to try it so when dinnertime rolled around we hurried to the garage to help her prepare it. That's when she read the ingredients to us. Wait till you hear what's in this stuff. It's duck, duck broth, chicken broth, chicken liver, chicken, potatoes, roasted duck, roasted quail, smoked turkey, peas, ocean fish,tomatoes, sweet potatoes, blueberries, raspberries and lots of vitamins and minerals. After reading all that Mom said it sounded like something from a menu of a fancy restaurant. This is how it looks.

Mom put some in my bowl and Mackey's bowl. We're both on diets so we only got a little, but she said there was plenty more for another day.

 So then she put the bowls down and we went to work. Mine tasted great.

Mackey agreed. 

This was like having an early Thanksgiving dinner. Be sure and tell your peeps about this special foodable. It would be great to have on hand over the holidays.

Your pal, Fudge
Chewy sent us a case of Taste of the Wild Wetlands at no cost to us in exchange for our honest review.

An Acquired Taste

When I grew up in the Northeast, I knew about 17 year cicadas. The big, ugly, noisy bug appeared every 17 years and were everywhere. I didn't know much about cicadas except that they don't fly really well, crashing into objects and people. They are very large bugs and they make an outrageous amount of noise. But people can put up with ugly noisy bugs once every seventeen years, right?

Then we moved to the midwest and guess what... there are cicadas that happen  every year. They are big and ugly and noisy and they are here every single summer. Sometimes they make so much noise that we can hear them inside the house with all the windows closed and we only sit outdoors in the evenings if we don't mind the constant high pitched shrieking. I do mind, so I don't sit out in the evenings.

But, not everyone dislikes cicadas as much as I do. My dogs love them.

When cicadas die, they tend to just drop out of the trees and we find them on the ground in the morning. My Porties race to grab them and crunch them up like potato chips. I remember a few years ago when Bailey found a live one on the ground and grabbed it. It kept rattling and screaming as Bailey ran around the yard with it in her mouth. She eventually stopped and put it down to study it, only to have Tess grab it and gobble it down.

Now a new generation has discovered the appeal of cicadas. Mackey is quite obsessed with them.

 Autumn is coming and the nights are getting cool. That means that in the morning we can usually find a few cicadas in the yard. Mackey is fast and usually beats the Porties to her new favorite treat.

 Occasionally she finds one with some buzz left and will carry it around until it stops buzzing. Then in a gulp, it's gone.

 Sebastian says, "I don't do bugs."

Smart.

An Observation

My Water Dogs have had a good life. They've never gone hungry. They've never had to sleep outdoors in the cold or heat or rain. They've always known they had a warm dry bed waiting them at the end of the day. They have lived with a routine so they know exactly when to expect their next meal and when they would go out to play and when they would go to sleep each night. This is what we would hope every dog could experience.

 Sebastian has a different story. We don't know what his early life was like but from his good manners, we think he was loved and cared for. Then something changed.

 We don't know how long Sebastian was on his own looking for home, but from his physical condition when he found us, he'd been alone for awhile. His eyes were red from the sun and his pads were sore from the hot pavement. His coat was covered with a tar like substance and lots of burrs. He was too thin and very tired and thirsty.

Some people don't give dogs credit for thinking or remembering, but Sebastian knows that things were bad and now they're better. How do I come to this conclusion?

Each evening when I feed my dogs their dinner, the Water Dogs and the Hound girls get excited and jump and bark and act like it's a special occasion. Sebastian walks to the spot where he eats and sits quietly waiting.

The Water Dogs and Hounds act like it's a race to see who can finish eating first. Then they come to me for their reward. What, a reward for eating dinner? I'm not sure how that got started but I try to think of it as dessert and give each of them half a biscuit.

Sebastian takes his time eating his meal, he's usually last to finish, then comes over and licks my hand. After every single meal, he licks my hand and I interpret it as a 'thank you for feeding me' action. He will also gladly accept his half biscuit but not until he thanks me.

The experts may say I'm projecting human feelings onto my dog, but I am convinced that Sebastian knows what it's like to go hungry and be lonely and not have a safe place to sleep and he appreciates what he has.

I'm so sorry that he had to experience bad things and I think they're responsible for the dreams he has every night when he cries and moans.

 I wish no dogs ever had to know such a life. Mostly I'm glad Sebastian found us and we can give him security and love.