Doggy Style (Wagg Original Beef & Veg)

Member Name: skittle

Product:	Wagg Original Beef & Veg
Date:	12/11/07 (151 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Economical and enjoyed by my dogs

Disadvantages: None that I've found

The story of how my dogs came to eat Wagg is a long and involved one, I’m afraid, that began about ten years ago as my pre-dog family (basically myself and my husband) set out one fine summer morning for a trip to Alton Towers. We were living in Nottingham at the time, so it wasn’t going to be a long trip. He was driving, I was navigating, and apart from the traffic being a bit heavy in places, everything was going well.

That was, until my husband spotted a huge sign at the side of the road… I think he’s regretted his next words ever since, but he (quite stupidly, in all honesty) said ‘oh, shall we go have a look?’ You see, what was written on the sign in enormous letters was ‘puppies and kittens for sale – farmyard’. The poor fool didn’t know what he’d let himself in for. We never did get to Alton Towers that day, we’d forgotten it was the school holidays you see, and the place was packed, so we headed to the nearest pet shop and stocked up, then went to collect the puppy. Skittle. And she was gorgeous, and we loved her, but she was a farm bred Border Collie, and for those of you who know anything about the breed what happened next will be no surprise at all.

Basically, having been in our flat (that’s right, flat, with no garden either) a couple of days and settled in she turned into the devil in disguise! The Hubster had dreadlocks back then and one of her favourite tricks was to grab one as it swung past and cling on for dear life – but this puppy reminiscence isn’t helping me to tell you about Wagg. Skit settled in, but she got desperately unhappy whenever she was left alone. Still, we persevered, moving to a house with a garden when she was around nine months old.

Still, no matter how much exercise she got, Skittle was constantly hyperactive. She was eating tinned meat and meal at the time. Of course, I now know that this is normal ‘teenage’ collie behaviour, but at the time I was going hairless. I’d phoned the RSPCA helpline for advice and been told to exercise her more, which was laughable as she insisted we play fetch constantly, in the house or out. Then the local dog club suggested I get another dog to keep her company, they could play together and use up their energy that way.

Enter Mokee, Collie crossed with heaven knows what else. An utter sweetheart of a dog, but last in the list for looks, I’m afraid. Mo was seven weeks old when we got her, the story being that when her mum was pregnant it was snowing outside. She was desperate to go out to toilet, but her owner was loathe to let her, in such awful weather. Still, she was working herself up to such a state that eventually she went out on a lead, and as she came back in, Mokee was born on the snowy back doorstep.

So, as you’ve probably guessed, I soon found myself with a hyperactive ‘teenage’ dog plus a demanding puppy to look after, double trouble. I was practically tearing my hair out when I took Mo for her jabs and spoke to a different vet at my surgery. This very scary, incredibly efficient German first of all told me off for getting a collie as a pet anyway, then instructed me in no uncertain terms to switch the dogs from tinned food to complete. According to her, tinned food contains far too much protein for pet dogs that don’t do any real heavy work, hence keeping them constantly too full of energy that has to come out somewhere. In this case it was naughty behaviour.

So I bought the nearest generic bag of complete dog food and switched them both to it straight away. It took a few days for hunger to set in enough for Skittle to touch it, she’s a pretty stubborn dog and even now she still prefers tinned food. I don’t know if it was solely because of putting her onto complete food, or if it just happened to coincide with the end of Skit’s teenage period, but it was only a few days later that she began to show signs of becoming more relaxed, less demanding and way, way better behaved. She’d gone from a roaring lion that I was, quite honestly, deciding that I was unable to care for properly, to an (almost) adorable family pet in a matter of days.

Things carried on like this for years, I’d basically buy whatever brand of complete dog food was on special offer to feed my dogs, with the exception of Pascoes, which they don’t like. We even had a disastrous few months trying to get used to Burns, a very expensive dog food that is supposed to be the most nutritionally complete dog food out there. My two both hated it, even worse, Skitty began eating her own faeces, and lost so much weight that I eventually gave up on it. However, I’d always avoided Wagg because it was the cheapest of the bunch, so in my head it couldn’t be any good, could it?

What finally changed my mind was a trip to my In-laws one Christmas where Skit and Mo both completely ignored their own bowls of food to get at Bonnie’s (the mother in laws poodle) bowl of Wagg. They finished it in no time, then asked for more, all the time ignoring their own full bowls of Butchers, or whatever brand I was feeding them at the time.

So, if they wanted to eat Wagg that much, who was I to argue with them? At only £1.99 a bag it was considerably cheaper than even the cheapest brand I’d bought them previously, and they liked it better.

I buy Wagg in the 2.5kg bags, as these are more convenient for me to transport and store. However, it’s also available in a 17kg sack at around £9 to £10. You can pick up Wagg Complete Original Beef & Veg at Asda, Morrisons, Jollyes, Pets At Home, Spar, Tesco, Wilkinsons and various Independent Retailers.

Your bag of Wagg has a yellow and red background which is pretty striking. There’s a picture of a Spaniel on the side and a bowl of Wagg complete. When you open the bag you’ll notice that the food in the bag doesn’t look much like the food on the front – it tends to get banged about in transit and the food does break up a bit, and tends to get coated in a powder made up of broken bits of food. This dog food does seem to have less crunch then some other brands. Still, the individual pieces are all recognisable, and the food smells good – even to a vegetarian. It smells wholesome, if such a thing is possible. Not overpoweringly smelly, but not so without smells that you’d worry it was bland, either.

As Wagg is a complete dog food you don’t need to add anything to it, no meat, gravy or any kind of supplement, though of course you can if you wish to, and I’m sure your dogs would thank you for the occasional change. Personally, I tend to stir grated cheese in with their Wagg sometimes, that’s what my girls prefer. Of course, it’s essential that you always have plenty of clean drinking water available with their food, too.

Wagg proudly proclaim on their packaging that they’re ‘all about natural, healthy ingredient’s’ and it’s true that they don’t use any artificial flavours or colours in their foods. What they do use is:

Wheat, meat meal (min 10% in beef kibble), wheetfeed, maize oils & fats, linseed, beet pulp, peas (min 4% in pea kibble), Lucerne, vitamins & minerals. Added citrus, yeast and yucca. With antioxidant: EC additive.

Wagg add yeasts and fibre to this food to aid digestion, vitamins A, E & C and natural antioxidants to support you dog’s immune system. They also add Yucca extract, that’s been used for many years to help reduce the unpleasant odours from flatulence.

The crunchy kibbles in Wagg ‘help clean teeth and gums and are enriched with digestible calcium and phosphorus to help promote strong teeth and bones’. Though Wagg can’t take all of the credit for this, Skittle and Mo are ten years old and nine this month, respectively. They both still have all of their teeth, and last time they had a vet check the vet commented on what good, clean teeth they have for their age. She also commented on how nice it is to see a Border Collie with a proper collie waist, as so many are overfed and fat, these days, another tick in the box for Wagg. That’s not all, either, they do not have bad breath, like so many dogs do, and they both have gorgeously silky coats.

This dog food comes in small chunks that even a miniature poodle can manage with no trouble. There’s a feeding guide on the side of the pack that advises you how much to feed your dog each day too, but my dogs eat nowhere near that amount, one bag lasts them for nearly a week, whilst according to Wagg they should finish it in just over two days.

There’s information on the pack about storage of this food, ingredients list and analysis, and an explanation of why they choose to include every item in this bag of food. There’s also the usual marketing blurb, which this time is strangely comforting. You could honestly believe that the makers of Wagg really do care about the health and well-being of your dog, as they tell you that Wagg is made in the Yorkshire countryside with care by a family of dog owners.

If you have any enquiries about Wagg, you can contact them at:
Wagg foods, Dalton Airfield, Topcliffe, Thirsk, North Yorkshire, YO7 3HE.
e-mail info@waggfoods.co.uk
tel: 01845 578111

The website is well worth a look too, at www.waggfoods.co.uk where I discovered that Wagg actually employ their own dog listener, Georgina Bowe, trained by Jan Fennel. Wagg state that she’ll be happy to help with any behavioural issues you may be having with your dog, you can contact her at the details above.

To be absolutely honest, I’d have been happy with the fact that Wagg is an economical brand and my dogs are happy and healthy and enjoy eating it, but something quite wonderful has happened in recent weeks that has made me trust Wagg even more. Asha is an eleven year old blue merle Border Collie who joined our family around 6 weeks ago. Prior to coming to us she’d spent far too long locked in a house with only another dog for company, her owners coming in to feed the dogs and let them out a few times a day.

When she came to live with us she was thin, I believe the other dog had been hogging the food, her coat was coarse and dull, feeling very rough to the touch and was so sparse in places that she was almost bald. She hadn’t coped well with the stress of living without human company. In only a few weeks Asha’s coat is now soft and shiny, her fur is much fuller and the bald patches are all but gone, her skin colour has calmed down and she’s putting on a bit of weight too, all thanks to Wagg, and an awful lot of cuddles and love, of course. That’s a better testimonial than any other I can give this product.

Summary: I won 't be switching dog foods in a hurry.