We love Dr. Marty's Sensitivity Select formula, but it is nutritionally listed as an adult food. We feed it sparingly to our puppies, since we like to expose them to the unique proteins it contains, but it would not be an appropriate stand alone food for dogs under the age of 6-8 months.
Fresh Foods
Bixbi Rawbble, OC Raw, Steve's Real Food, Dr. Marty's, Small Batch, Northwest Naturals, The Simple Food Project, Smack, and Stella and Chewy's are considered "fresh foods." Freeze-dried or air-dried raw foods conveniently provide the benefits of feeding a fresh diet without the mess of feeding "raw" meat. However, many freeze-dried or air-dried fresh foods are available for a lower cost as a frozen raw product. While some of the below foods are only available online, many can be found locally by using the website store locater search feature. In my area of southern Oregon, Rogue Valley Pet and Nature's Pet carry several of the below brands in both freeze-dried or frozen raw choices. Some of the products are also available on Chewy.com, sometimes at a lower price than the manufacturer's website auto ship discount. Choosing an auto ship option will nearly always add a special discount to products.
Click on images or links below to purchase or find a retailer.
We love to cook for our dogs, but we prefer to wait until they are older than 6-8 months to do so. We recommend adding the Four Leaf Rover and Raw Vibrance Meat Mixers as a supplement to your adult dog's diet.
To go directly to the pawTree website, click on the logo image above. To go to a specific item, click on the images below.
GROOMING SUPPLIES
At the very least for grooming, you should have a steel comb and a good quality shampoo and conditioner. We are always in favor of natural ways to control fleas and ticks and are completely opposed to oral flea and tick medications. Using a combination of natural shampoos and sprays, we have had great success with our own dogs. I've included below links to the products we use and recommend. Wondercide is a great flea and tick prevention spray—it only lasts for a half day, so it needs to be reapplied frequently when exposure is higher. We love the High Cascade Shampoo since it has ingredients that are natural flea and tick repellents as well as killing fleas and ticks when bathing. We also have used the Mink Sheen Shampoo, which is similar to the High Cascade Shampoo and has natural flea and tick control ingredients (but we prefer High Cascade). We dilute High Cascade 1 part shampoo to 1-2 parts water, but the Mink Sheen isn't as concentrated, so we use it undiluted. We like to use a tearless puppy shampoo around eyes—the Bio-Groom Fluffy Puppy Shampoo is gentle and smells wonderful, we've also used Hartz and Sergeant puppy shampoos and regularly use Johnson and Johnson Baby Wash and Shampoo. Finish off the bath with a soothing cream rinse, like the Bio-Groom Natural Oatmeal Creme Rinse or the Chris Christensen Day to Day Conditioner. We usually dilute conditioners 1:2-3. The Artero Matt-X De-matter is a premium de-matting spray—it relaxes the coat and lets tangles glide out and is great to use after bathing to loosen mats that can form as your puppy's coat transitions to the adult coat around 7-10 months old. The Charmar Cowboy Magic is another great detangler, although it can leave a bit of a residue, so I use it for dogs who are heavily matted, but you may to do bathe the dog again after de-matting to remove the residue. The Chris Christensen T Brush and the Safari De-Matting Comb are also highly recommended basic tools. We have been very impressed with the Gimars Scissors Kit, which also includes a steel comb. If you choose to trim your puppy's nails, we recommend you have styptic powder on hand to stop bleeding if you cut into the quick—it happens even to the most experienced! For those that want the adventure of grooming your own doodle, we've included an Advanced Grooming Supplies list, also. It is a bit of an investment, but we love the time we spend with our doodles making them look just the way we want. Whether you want to do a complete groom or just maintenance care on face and paws between professional grooming visits, the below supplies are recommended to keep your doodle looking tidy.
TRAINING AND TOYS
We are strong believers in crate training/enclosure training. Our preference is a double door wire crate for added convenience (side and end doors)—if you want to make it more den-like, just throw a blanket over it. Wire crates can be collapsed for easy transport and storage—use 30 inch for mini to small medium dogs. The 24 inch crate is a good starting size for small puppies and is easier to transport than larger crates. Avoid fabric crates or plastic crates since they tend to get too hot, and fabric crates are easily chewed. While puppy is being potty trained, we just use large bath towels as the bedding for ease of cleaning (your puppy will come home with a towel that has been laundered and smells like our home). Puppy fencing is another house training tool we highly recommend—a secured area keeps your puppy (and house) safe in your absence or for times when you are unable to closely supervise. The FXW modular fencing comes in several heights—we recommend the 32 inch for the house-training/growing-up stage, unless you plan to use it as a long-term fencing solution, in that case, the 40 inch would work well. Another adequate fencing type is the x-pen. It is a little less bulky and a little less expensive than the FXW modular, but, in our opinion, it is not as convenient to use since all the sections are permanently attached. If you do choose to use an x-pen, make sure you are getting one that has a step through door. If you have a puppy that escapes their enclosure, then the x-pen with the cover is a good option to create an escape-proof containment area. Another house-training tool we recommend is Dog Door Bells—you can teach puppy to ring the bell to alert you of the need to go outside.
Your puppy will go home with some new toys from us and also a “comfort” toy that has been gently used by the litter. But, puppies love a variety of toys, so feel free to stock up on plenty of them! As your puppy grows, you may need to phase out soft toys if your puppy becomes an aggressive chewer—some puppies love to carry around and snuggle with soft "babies" and other puppies love to demolish anything that can be shredded. If your puppy is of the shredder type, it shouldn’t have any soft toys (and watch for socks left on the floor!), since they can be eaten and could cause a bowel obstruction. We like Nylabone products for hard toys and Skineeez for soft toys. We also like Kong toys that can be filled with treats, and we have added links to a couple other interactive feeding toys. We never give our adult dogs rawhide chews since they are hard to digest and can cause choking. The only time we give rawhide is to puppies during their teething period to help them loosen stubborn baby canines, and then only under close supervision—if the rawhide becomes soft from chewing, we take it away until it has dried out and is hard again. Our dogs enjoy eating Bully Sticks—just be sure to take away the end of the piece before it gets smaller than six inches and becomes a choking hazard, and we only give Bully Sticks when we are present to observe. We highly recommend putting bully sticks in a holder, which lets the stick be chewed down safely to a small size. (Order 6 inch sticks if using a holder, 12 inch if not using a holder, and then throw away the last 5-6 inches—the holder lets the dog chew down to the last inch). Some bully sticks have a very strong odor, we find the Natural Farm bully sticks to be nearly odor-free. Of course, make sure all edible products are sourced and made in the USA or countries with similar quality standards—never from China.
For NuVet, use Order Code 27803. Select the "Autoship" option for best pricing.
Please note: We feel the Simple Food Project recipes are among the best fresh foods on the market, and they are very reasonably priced. However, to be nutritionally appropriate for puppies as a stand alone diet, you must add the Puppy Balancer supplement until the dog can transition to adult food formulas by 6-8 months of age. You also may want to consider the Simple Food Project easier to chew small nugget formulas (still need to add the Puppy Balancer) for young puppies.
ADVANCED GROOMING SUPPLIES
If you want to groom your Cherry Lane Doodle yourself, here are the tools we use. In addition to the basic grooming supplies listed above, you'll also want a thinning shear (the thinning shear included in the Gimars kit is all you need), a trimming shear, and an electric clipper with blades and comb attachments. The Andis clipper comes with a #10 blade, which is all you need to start—the combs attach to the #10 blade. The Happy Hoodie helps settle a dog who is unsure of grooming—it soothes them and also minimizes the noise of the blow dryer. While convenient, you don't need a grooming table and professional hairdryer, but we listed them just in case. We started grooming our doodles on a card table and used a handheld hairdryer for many years, but the professional dryer will give you a much nicer finish and full coat. When I invested in the professional dryer, the quality of the dog's finished coat was a dramatic improvement.
High Cascade 4 in 1 Shampoo and Conditioner is available directly from the manufacturer.
Use code INTRO4U for 20% off your first order of pawTree products!
Some of my favorite pawTree non-food item suggestions—choose THREE non-food items to qualify for free shipping:
Gastro Pro Plus, Urine Eliminator, Oxy Shot, Flea & Tick Spray, pawPairings Lamb Medley, or potty bags. You can find many more items on the pawTree website! (Hint: the little truck in the upper left corner identifies non-food items.)
Nature's Miracle can typically be purchased locally at a lower cost.
Benebone chew toy is available for a lower price at Walmart under the name Lumabone.
FOOD AND TREATS
Over the last several years, we have gradually been evolving our dogs' diets to contain less kibble and more fresh food. Fresh food for dogs is considered food that is not highly processed. Fresh foods we recommend are raw foods, freeze-dried or air dried raw, or lightly cooked foods made from human grade ingredients. These can either be commercially prepared or home prepared following a specific holistic veterinarian approved recipe. Kibble is highly processed food and loses much of its nutritional value during its high heat processing, which must then be added back in after processing as sprays and coatings. For this reason, we now recommend a greater proportion of our dogs diets be fresh foods. We recommend you feed your dog a variety of foods throughout its life—changing brands and proteins frequently. Dogs do best when fed a fresh food healthy diet high in variety—just as humans do best with a diet full of healthy foods. When making changes to your dog's diet, do so slowly over a period of days to weeks to avoid tummy upset. We feed our puppies a mix of fresh foods such as freeze-dried and air-dried raw, with a very small portion of kibble. We have concerns about feeding a dog highly processed kibble as its main food for its entire life. However, we understand that not all families can afford or will choose to feed their dog fresh foods, so we continue to include kibble in our puppies' diets to ease the transition to a full kibble diet if that is a family's choice. The kibble we currently feel we can recommend is PawTree, although we have previously used Go Solutions, and Life's Abundance. (While we feel Life's Abundance is a high quality food, the kibble proteins they offer include chicken and eggs. The lamb recipe they have recently added includes powdered eggs as a top ingredient. We no longer feed puppies Life's Abundance and recommend waiting to introduce chicken and egg proteins until your puppy is 8-12 months old.)
Because we understand that not all people can afford to feed an exclusively fresh diet or have the time to cook for their dogs, in our go home pack we will provide a sample of the kibble we are currently feeding the litter such as PawTree Real Whitefish and Brown Rice. We'll also send with you samples of the fresh foods your puppy is currently eating—freeze-dried and air-dried raw foods such as Bixbi Freeze-Dried Lamb or Turkey, OC Raw Turkey, Steve's Real Food Turkey, The Simple Food Project Lamb or Bison (including a sample of the Puppy Balancer), Smack, Northwest Naturals, or Stella and Chewy's Freeze-Dried Lamb. We recommend you order a bag of the foods we are currently feeding to have ready when your puppy comes home. If you choose to change from your puppy's current food, please wait for a few months to make that change—puppy will do best if the food remains the same until the transition to your home is complete.
We avoid feeding chicken, eggs, and beef as the primary meal proteins until a puppy is 8-12 months old, since chicken and beef are the two highest allergy causing proteins for dogs. Lamb, fish, turkey, bison, and duck seem to be tolerated better by puppies as primary proteins than chicken. We do not recommend regularly feeding grain-free products if much of the protein content is derived from plants—legumes and potatoes in particular. Grain-free products can be included in a rotation of foods, they just should not be fed exclusively throughout a dog's life.
We enjoy cooking for our older dogs as well, but we always make sure we follow a recipe that has been carefully balanced by veterinarians to meet all the nutritional needs for dogs. Holistic vets, Dr. Judy Morgan and Dr. Karen Becker, have great recipes that have been developed over years of research. You can find their recipes in their books as well as on their FaceBook pages. There are also a variety of prepared products that can be added to your choice of meat protein to balance it without needing to follow a recipe. For mixers, we recommend Dr. Harvey's Raw Vibrance and Four Leaf Rover Meat Mixer. (Please note—we do not recommend exclusively home cooked meals for young puppies! We feel puppies should be on a commercially prepared food appropriate for growing puppies until they are at least 6-8 months old.)
Why NuVet Plus? NuVet Plus is a full spectrum immune system builder, not just a vitamin. It's filled with a synergistic blend of anti-oxidants, amino acids, enzymes, vitamins, minerals and more, designed to promote healthy cells. It contains no sugars, fillers, binders, grains or artificial flavors and is manufactured in the USA in an FDA registered, human pharmaceutical laboratory. We have tried other supplements over the years, and always come back to NuVet Plus. We see incredible results with NuVet Plus—outwardly healthy coats and skin are a sign to us of inner health. We give a daily NuVet Plus vitamin supplement to all our dogs and puppies.
We also send puppies home with samples of probiotics, which helps puppy's digestive system cope with the stress of new surroundings. We firmly believe in supporting gut health for our dogs and give all our dogs and puppies a daily dose of probiotics and prebiotics. We recommend rotating between a variety of probiotics, such as Four Leaf Rover Protect, Proviable-DC by Nutramax, and PawTree Gastro Pro Plus.
As far as treats, we use part of the puppy's daily food. You can train with kibble for a low value reward until the puppy becomes bored with it. We also use Cheerios as a low value treat for training and as a reward for crate training. For high value rewards, we use the freeze-dried raw foods from their daily meal. Stella and Chewy's Freeze-Dried Lamb works very well since it can be broken into very small bites, and Bixbi Rawwble also works well since they are small nuggets. When puppies are older, you can add Real Meat Jerky Treats, which come in several flavors and can be broken into very small pieces. You can also use high value treats such as small bits of cheese or cooked meat.
As a special chewing reward, we give our dogs bully sticks. The Natural Farm Bully Sticks are low odor and edible but should only be given under close supervision. We encourage you to use a bully stick holder with a six inch bully stick so that nearly the full stick can be eaten without risk of choking on a small piece. If you are not using a holder, then we recommend the twelve-inch bully stick, and be sure to remove the bully stick when it becomes soft and allow to air dry and harden again or discard it when it becomes a choking hazard when it is consumed to smaller than five to six inches. Puppies also enjoy Himalayan Milk Chews or a variety of interactive holders filled with their softened meal, such as West Paw Zogoflex toys. Make sure all food and treats are sourced and made in the USA or other countries with equally high standards such as Canada, New Zealand or Argentina, nothing ever from China.
We are currently starting puppies on pawTree Real Whitefish and Brown Rice kibble recipe. We love that pawTree kibble only comes in 10-pound bags, so if you order the larger quantities of 20 or 30 pounds (super price break!), you are getting two or three 10-pound bags instead of a huge bag that is hard to get through in a timely manner. Choose "EZ Ship" and add three non-food products to receive free shipping. We recommend puppies start with the Whitefish kibble, and then choose three additional non-food items to lock in your free shipping. Avoid all CBD products until your dog is an adult. For older dogs on maintenance or weight loss diets, we recommend the Real Trout and Barley Recipe.
Select the "Autoship" option for best pricing.
These are some of our favorite puppy items that we like and use ourselves.
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