Champions' Corner

Mo' with less

By Jon Little / October 8th, 2009

I was so pumped about breaking open my first bag of Momentum that I shoveled out heaping helpings of the dark brown kibble to my dogs, which turned out to be a big, wet mistake.

The food is so rich in fat and protein that large servings can pass right through your dog, making for some pretty expensive diarrhea. Tim Hunt, the veterinarian and dog musher who developed Momentum, explicitly warns new customers to take it easy when transitioning their dogs to this high-octane food. I, however, didn't read his advice until I was several days into my new feeding regimen, which involved giving my dogs the same quantity of Momentum that I fed with my previous kibble. I cut back on quantity, and saw immediate improvement.

If there's one piece of advice to anyone switching over to Momentum, it is this: Take it slow and keep it light. It is totally against our nature as guardians of our dogs to restrict their diets, but Momentum is so rich that it has to be fed sparingly, at least at first, and is best introduced a little at a time.

The basic approach

I learned my lesson the hard way. It turned out I was in good company. I called my neighbor Paul Gebhardt, who has fed Momentum exclusively the last three years, to find out how the dog food has performed for his kennel of fast Iditarod sled dogs. He loves it, he said. Then he quickly talked about how he made the same mistake I did starting out.

"I kept trying to feed too much of it," he said. "It seems like you're not giving them enough to survive, but they do real well. They do a lot better when you cut back because their systems are absorbing rather than blowing through.

"If you're just playing a big guessing game with it, until you figure it out, you are going to have lot of diarrhea."

Brent Sass, a rising Yukon Quest contender who has fed Momentum for three years, put it this way: "It's finicky, but once you got if figured out, it works great. I got it worked out with all my main dogs, and I can keep weight on them without feeding that much." Sass said his higher metabolism dogs get multiple small feedings a day. "Feeding a lot at once was a trigger for diarrhea."

If you're starting out, Hunt recommends a reduction of 25 percent from your old kibble.

As Sass and open class sprint champion Egil Ellis say, start out feeding less Momentum to your dogs than you think you should. If the stools stay firm, start upping the quantity. And if the stools get soft, back off, until you have a handle on each dog's needs. "Remember, this is high potency dog food and some dogs are more sensitive than others," Ellis said.

Fine tuning tips

Gebhardt spent the past summer feeding his dogs "one coffee can" of Momentum per 10 dogs every evening, with a meat snack in the morning. A coffee can holds about 13 or 14 cups, so he's averaging just over a cup of food per dog, and I'm sure some get less and some more. I have not ratcheted down that low, and am averaging about 1.5 coffee cans per 10 dogs, or just under 2 cups per dog, plus a meat meal. Some days I skip the meat snack and feed Momentum twice a day.

When Gebhardt feeds, he adds water to a bucket of Momentum and immediately doles it out. The one can of kibble to 10 dog ratio had not changed much by late September, but he was starting to up their feed a little as temperatures cooled and miles lengthened in his fall training.

By the time the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race rolls around, on the first Saturday in March, Gebhardt will feed his dogs whatever they need to stay in perfect shape. On the race itself, they eat Momentum as their core diet, with trail snacks of meat, fat and fish. "I can increase the amount a lot during Iditarod because their whole metabolism changes," he said.

Faster perspective from Egil Ellis

"When we switched to Momentum we went straight over to it without any problems," Ellis said. "It is great tasting and easily digested food for the dogs." The champion sprint musher will write his own article later with details about how he feeds Momentum. But to sum up, he said he tried different approaches, and has come up with a technique of feeding the bulk of it once each night, dry with a soaked Momentum broth poured over it. His dogs also get about a quart of water containing soaked Momentum or Pursuit in the morning. In the winter, he supplements with meat and fat to boost energy.Once the disciplined feeding approach has been mastered, mushers who rely on Momentum say the formula is a huge hit. "Our dogs love the taste of Momentum and Pursuit, and I have yet to see  anyone of them not finish it as quickly as they can every time it is put in front of them!" Ellis said. "We set trail records at the end of the season and our dogs were healthy and strong through out the winter."

Beware the dreaded bacteria

Gebhardt feels soaking dog food just creates an unnecessary risk of bacteria attacking his dogs' guts. He feeds it dry during the race as well, even during longer runs between checkpoints or camp outs. His trail snacks are typically meat and fish, but even when he does snack his team on Momentum, he pours it onto the snow dry.

"I know if you do use soaked food, you have to wash your cooler and stuff a lot more," he said, "because you do build up bacteria in your cooler."

I can vouch for that. During last year's Yukon Quest, I was determined to feed my dogs well. But my game plan called for soaked kibble as well as meat snacks. By the time I figured out what was going on with my dogs' guts, it took hours, if not days, for the diarrhea to work its way out of their systems. The culprit was bacteria in my cooler. I think a musher could lightly soak out food in cool water and make soaked kibble work -- I've seen Iditarod winners do it repeatedly -- but there is an art to doing that. Practice it in pre-season races first and work out the bugs before you launch into a 1,000-miler.

I try to keep my dogs pretty fat, so it has been hard for me to cut back on their food. As I write, I'm still forcing myself to back off what I want to give them, and the results have been very encouraging. Coats are shiny, they're keeping weight and stools are small and firm.

If I'd had any other result, this article would never have been written.