For those of you who hike with your dogs, do you bring dog food or high quality treats or something else??
Not looking purely as a weight savings, she carries her own food, meds and bowl, but when we are "out" my GSD generally only eats half the amount of her normal daily dose of dry food. With sustained activity, I'd like her eat a little more and possibly more healthy. Granted, I add a little of my jerky or rehydrated meals to her food and she will usually eat it all then. But that probably not the healthy option and it adds to the mess and chance of bugs or critters.
Whatever I bring for her, I want to feed it to her here and there just to be sure she doesn't get diarrhea or some other issue.
ETA: She is getting old (10) which is why I'm more concerned. Until this summer, we used to walk around 20 miles a week, mostly around town but a few miles of legitimate hiking. Now we do a few hundred yards to maybe a mile every day. I still condition her with the pack on our usual walks prior to trips. Being a working dog, she knows what the pack means in regards to what we are about to do. Same with her hunting vest and life vest. But working dogs are bad about knowing when to stop or slow down. They will keep pushing if they think you want them to. I've learned what to watch for with this one, I'm sure others can have their own signs. But with her age, I'm much more casual with our backpacking now. 6 maybe 8 miles a day with plenty of breaks. Between the two of us, we average 4-5 liters per day in addition to what she drinks straight from the source while I'm collecting water to filter.
This is the pack she carries. I believe it's around 6 years old. But it has served us well. No longer available
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