help? delay seeing vet

[msKathleen]

Help? I'm picking my puppy up in three weeks. From the breeders house to mine it is about a three hour drive. Poor little puppy, I know. But here's my problem. I've found a holistic vet but can't see her until 3 weeks after I bring my pup home. I'm going to be feeding the pup a home cooked diet, can I start this when I bring it home or should I wait until the pup sees the vet? At the breeders it has been introduced to what I consider a very poor quality dog food--main ingredient being corn. I'd like to get the pup off to a good start. The diet that I've selected has been taken from Piticarin's book. Should I wait?

[satchelp]

I don't see any reason to wait to start feeding the home cooked diet, as long as you transition the puppy over gradually. What you may want to think about, however, is that most contracts with breeders require that you have the puppy's health checked by a vet within a certain timeframe after you take possession of the puppy, and the timeframe is usually less than 3 weeks.

[clm]

Congratulations on your new puppy. The drive for us back and fourth to the breeder for both our guys was a little over yours so it's really not that long. I've known people driving for days to pick up their little balls of love.
Baxter was fine the whole drive back. Bentley on the other hand howled most of the way.

Our breeder too, fed what we consider to be a terrible diet. Iams puppy it was. We started to change ours over to different food from the very first meal.

As for the delay in seeing the vet. Make sure you check to see what the purchase agreement between you and the breeder was on the time frame you have to visit a vet. We did not have a strict time frame with this breeder, but have had them in the past with our other two dogs. With these two we didn't take them for 4 weeks when they were due for their second shots. They came with very good medical records and were obviously very healthy pups, if you are at all inexperienced with dogs or puppies, get yourself to a vet sooner rather than later to make sure the pup is healthy.

Cindy

[msKathleen]

No strict guidelines, so I guess I'm okay. Did you experience any problems when you brought it home & immediately switched its diet?

[clm]

We switched ours gradually. I had a bag of what the breeder fed and mixed in new with it gradually. Once the small bag of what the breeder fed was gone, they were on nothing but new.

Cindy