Help with a quick shopping / sourcing question? What do you feed your pets in France - I mean dogs & cats who don’t work (???) Do you think dry food, or tins or pouches or a mix ? Or can you find frozen options. From the supermarket or pet shop or online? Thanks (i’m looking after picky eaters later in the year… and not sure I can find the same options here…) teresa x
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Do cats ever work in the same capacity that we may think dogs work…??? x 
My youngest Border Collie at 7 has always been fed raw meat and bones and is a puppy from a raw fed mother…
He’s never been picky as long as I feed him raw…x
I’ve never fed them sachets or tins and the only kibble they have eaten as an emergency back up has been Burns and Origen…
I buy “human grade” from supermarkets in Brittany…raw rabbit is a favourite…in uk I bought from specialised RMB suppliers…I’ve yet to find one here so everything they eat is from a supermarket…x
Tom Lonsdale…
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I have a cat that I ‘rescued’ a couple of years ago when she was quite young. She was very timid and it took me a long time to build up enough trust that she would eventually let me approach her.
She had a bad limp and wasn’t well. I eventually managed to give her a couple of tranqulisers (provided by the vet) and was able to take her for a check up. She was poorly and had a stomach infection, it was ‘touch and go’ and the vet left me to decide whether to try to heal her. I decided that as she had got that far then she deserved a chance and with treatment and TLC she made it. She hated being inside and her meows were pitiful and hard to bear but I persevered. She recoverd from her infection, I then had her sterilised, more trauma, but she is a lovely cat. She walks with a limp, vet says she was caught in a trap so had part of her paw torn away, and she is really affectionate now. She has become a good companion to my mum. Foodwise she is very picky. The vet suggested a ‘Hill’s plan food’ that seemed to suit her. Suddenly she took against it and wouldn’t touch anything I tried. Eventually I found Sheba ‘soup’ in chicken that she likes and Purina dried food for sterilised cats. Not many rabbits around here and as she is lame not sure that she could catch them, although she does try catching frogs ! 
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As far as I am aware pet food has to be fit for human consumption - desperate straits call for desperate measures and all that.
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We had a long, long debate with ourselves about what to feed our dog.
Raw food was a possibility, but we felt that meat sold for dogs was msot likely to have come from animals with poor welfare standards. And if we brought free range high quality meat we would probably need another mortgage.
So we looked at dry food. The one that seemed nutritionally best was manufactured in the States, and we didn’t like the idea of transporting stuff uneccessarily. Other big brands we rejected because of their ethics or nutrition.
In the end we went for a smaller french produced brand. Yes it is largely made from duck which since they are based in south west is most likely a by-product from the foie gras industry which is deeply unethical. However when we balanced up all the different positives & negatives they came out best.
https://www.babin-nutrition.com/en/
He also gets and loves loads of vegetables and fruit. In fact the only things he wont eat are bananas and celery.
Dogs are a pack animal so understand pecking order and have a good memory as they need it to comprehend their place in the hierarchy - plus they are quite intelligent; I have a lot of respect for dogs.
Cats are a different category of thing altogether - we sort-of domesticated them as they were useful for keeping rodents at bay but they operate more on low cunning than intelligence and, not being a pack animal, have no clue as to “social” ties.
Being honest cats hang around humans because we provide warmth and food but if some other human provides more warmth and food there is no loyalty. In fact I suspect that most cats look upon humans as something which would be prey, if only they were a little larger……
PS: I have two cats 
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I’m impressed that you tried the cat food.
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What do the “picky eaters” eat at the moment ???
Given that information… you might well find that folk do know of suitable/similar products that you can obtain in France…
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We feed a mixture of turkey thigh, broccoli, green beans and croquettes.
Each portion is weighed and then frozen.
The croquettes are then added.
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Note to self…must read through before publishing 
I did actually try one of her malt and cream cat treats because it smelt so nice … it was revolting, never again 
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Raw dog food is definitely not fit for human consumption. Dogs stomachs produce much stronger acid (a ph of 2 if raw fed).
I was thinking tinned.
Yes, the usually quoted range is 1.05-2.2 for dogs and 1.5-3.5 for humans, although that is for “fed” individuals. The fasting pH is actually less acid in dogs.
That said it is not clear whether dogs can “cope” with more rancid meat than humans because of the low pH - both dog and human stomachs are pretty effective at killing bacteria.
I haven’t had a dog for over 40 years so don’t have a lot of experience - a couple of random thoughts though…
Just because you feed your dog raw meat doesn’t mean it has to be rotten does it?
What would be considered unfit for human consumption today would possibly have been considered edible in years gone by - OK, many years but “fit for consumption” is a grey scale thing, not black and white.
To be fair I suspect that most who own dogs and feed them raw meat would not consider eating that themselves but my understanding was that meat going into tinned pet food manufacture had to be fit for human consumption in case of accidental (or deliberate, but you’d have to be desperate) ingestion.
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The raw food I buy in the UK smells awful and I often wonder how my dog eats it.
Yes, I agree tinned dog food is probably safe to eat. Naturo, which I occasionally give to my dog ,smells really nice.
I think many years ago there was probably a division, as always, between the poverty stricken and everyone else. Probably rural communities ate fresher food than us in summer. I think the poor mostly ate barley, oats and beans and if they could then pork which was salted so didn’t have much meat anyway.
It would be those in urban areas that would struggle but a pig may well have been kept in a yard and fed on anything left over.
As recently as the '70’s my husband’s grandparents kept 2 pigs at the bottom of their garden.
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We still do not know what the picky-eaters eat at their own home… ???
My ex visited a factory many years ago that made tinned dog and cat food. He was there as a consultant on another matter. He was very impressed by the cleanliness, the standards and the lovely smells. He was offered a taste, accepted and pronounced it delicious.
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In my experience dogs digestive systems easily cope with a naturally gone off piece of meat…I’ve watched mine bury a rabbit head or a lamb bone (because they’re full up) and dug it up days later to eat and absolutely no ill effects…
This is different to “rancid” ingredients that often find their way into commercial pet food and have led to massive product recalls after killing a number of pets…
A high number of the commercially produced kibbles and tinned only include 4 per cent “meat”…the rest being sugars and cereal fillers etc that the carnivore digestive system is unable to utilise…
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Who do you buy from Teresa…???
I mainly bought from Nature’s menu supplementing with whole wild rabbit and venison bones from a smaller supplier…
Green tripe I tended to feed semi-frozen…! x 
I have a local shop in the UK and they sell all the main suppliers e.g. bulmers. When we’re in France I take a huge polystyrene box of food in the car, packs of naturo and I use any meat on offer in the local supermarkets.
As we are planning on moving to france permanently next year I need to research locally. Apparently there is an abattoir in Riberac so I will try there.
Any advice will be welcome. We are going to take our small freezer over so I will have it packed full which should last a couple of months.
Whenever I buy a chicken I pull off the wings for my dog. I also buy packs of drumsticks etc but am careful to counterbalance with some non bony meat.
Once a week I feed sardines and a raw egg.
I sprinkle kelp and alfalfa on her food too.
Tripe is truly disgusting and I only feed it occasionally
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I had the same worry…bringing raw fed dogs from uk and not knowing local proximity to outlets…not even knowing how close the nearest supermarket was…
I bought a chest freezer with us and same as you enough raw food to last a couple of months…I also bought a bag of burns with us…I hardly used it in the end…
Conversely the only food I bought over for us to eat was a box of cereal bars that had run out by the first morning after arrival…lol…we were starving but they were fine…x 
So far…having found out that fortunately a supermarket is about 3 miles away then at the minute I buy their raw food from there…chicken wings and thighs and legs…turkey wings…beef heart and beef liver…beef offcuts pour les animaux (super u) …rabbit portions…(usually including heart lungs and liver)…lamb ribs…anything unprocessed on the reduced section…reduced items on the fresh fish counter…mine have a raw egg regularly too…one week out of four they have a raw egg daily…
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I make treats from chicken livers blended with oats and raw egg which I bake in a low oven and 1lb chicken livers makes enough treats to last a month.
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