Dearly Beloved (James Wellbeloved)

Member Name: SueMagee

Product:	James Wellbeloved
Date:	02/10/05 (4613 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A high-quality dog food.

Disadvantages: Not always suitable for very small dogs.

I’d like to introduce you to our two girls. They’d like to be introduced to you too, because they’re friendly dogs even though they look a little fearsome. Both are pedigree Rhodesian Ridgebacks – Rosie’s nearly seven years old and Kia is four. Rosie will always be the larger of the two – she’s actually a little on the tall side of the breed standard for a bitch and weighs about 40kg, but Kia isn’t a long way behind at 35kg.

Rosie came to us when she was seven weeks old. Kia was four months old and unfortunately we were not her first home. Both had previously been fed on Pedigree complete dog food, but I’ve never been convinced about the quality of the Pedigree pet foods and over the course of a week we changed them over to James Wellbeloved Complete Puppy Food. If you are changing your dog’s diet you should always do this gradually – by initially including a small amount of the new food and gradually increasing this until you have reduced the old food to nil – as this avoids stomach upsets.

The puppy food (a turkey and rice kibble) has a higher level of protein than the foods for older dogs. This is essential if the puppy is to grow into a strong, well-formed adult. Both of the girls have grown up into well-formed adults. Whether or not they’re well-balanced is another matter – it’s a cold morning and Rosie has made several attempts to get under the duvet. I think I heard a request for a hot-water bottle. Kia, meanwhile, is carrying her pet stone round with her. She found it in the garden and even when I throw it out she goes outside and finds it amongst the millions of other stones in the gravel garden. She doesn’t chew it – she simply carries it around with her.

At six months we began the process of gradually changing them over to the adult maintenance food, which is in the same form as the puppy food. It’s dark brown and in a clover-leaf shape which is just over a centimetre across at its widest point. It’s dry and very hard. The size is ideal for our dogs which have large powerful jaws, but on the occasion that I had, in an emergency, to feed my friend’s toy poodle she did find that the pieces were a little bit too much of a mouthful. She compensated by chewing a telephone cable.

The food, which is virtually odourless to humans, seems to have a magical attraction for dogs. Even bringing the large 15kg sacks into the house has them jumping around gleefully. We generally buy the turkey and rice kibble as this was what they seemed to like as puppies, but there is also Lamb and Rice and Duck and Rice varieties. They have had these on occasions when I haven’t been able to get the turkey and rice and they certainly didn’t turn their noses up at either.

At the age of six we moved Rosie onto the "Senior" food. This has fewer calories than the adult maintenance diet and allows the dog to eat the same quantity of food without putting on weight because they're not as active as they once were. We switched Kia over at the same time, on our vet's advice as she has hip problems and it was essential that she didn't put weight on either.

Each dog has 100gr of the kibble in the morning and 200gr at night, so a large sack lasts for 25 days. Bought from a discount feed merchant this usually costs about £35. We serve the meals partially moistened as this is how they seem to like it – part of the food is all squidgy, but the rest is crisp. Occasionally some meat or fish scraps are added as a treat, but they do eat vast quantities of raw vegetables. As with all dried foods it’s essential that plenty of fresh water is available at all times.

I could buy cheaper food. When I go to the feed merchant I regularly see 15kg sacks of feed at £15 or less, but when I look at the labels they are none too specific about the ingredients. They seem to be all smell (for the sake of the humans – it makes them think they’re feeding their dogs something tasty) and cheap fillers such as soya. The James Wellbeloved is guaranteed not to contain this and there is no wheat or wheat gluten. There’s also no beef, and no eggs or dairy produce. Why is this so important? Well, these days it’s not only human beings who suffer from allergies – it’s becoming more prevalent in the dog world too, particularly in the pedigree breeds.

Both of our dogs have suffered from skin allergies, a common problem in Ridgebacks, and for a while it was necessary to change the dogs’ diet so that we could eliminate this as being a source of the problem. Neither looked as well in the time that they were on prescription food and nor did the skin problem improve. With Rosie we subsequently established that it was an allergy to house dust mite and Kia’s main problem is with pollens. Both have been free of problems for some time and I’m confident that in two dogs who are prone to allergies the problem does not lie with their feed.

The choice of dog food also affects three other potential problems – teeth, smells, and, er, those little parcels that responsible owners remove. Both our dogs have good strong teeth with no gum problems. It’s not really practical to reproduce the sort of diet which a dog would have had in the wild, but the crunchiness of the kibble does help to keep the teeth and gums strong. Bad teeth and gums are a common cause of the smells which come from one end of the dog, but diet is usually the cause of the awful pongs which can come from the other. We do get the occasional nasty whiff but it’s unusual and can generally be traced back to a dead rabbit which was “caught” over the fields. As for the remaining problem, well it’s not too messy a job with this food!

In addition to the puppy, adult maintenance and senior foods, James Wellbeloved also supply a large breed variety and a long-coated breed food although this is being discontinued. Something else which they’ll supply you with on request is their quarterly magazine and this is really worth having. It covers pet-related current events, health problems (including alternative therapies) and there’s an article on a dog and a cat breed each issue. There’s a little of the “aren’t we a wonderful company?” but if they’re sending me this for free and it makes good reading I suppose I can forgive them that.

If you’d like a free sample of the food (limited to one per household) visit www.wellbeloved.co.uk/free-sample/form.htm where they’ll offer you a selection of the samples they have available for dogs, cats and, er, ferrets. It should be with you within ten days. There is a website for the company at http://www.wellbeloved.co.uk which covers the basic points about the food and there are plenty of links for free samples. The list of stockists even supplies a link to a map so that you can find them more easily.

Rosie and Kia could have got you there on smell alone though!

Summary: A premium-quality dog food which is suitable for most types of dog.