Mixing raw and cooked food for a Springer Spaniel

Mixing raw and cooked feeding is actually a smart move for a lot of dogs, but the nutritional balance piece is where people can come unstuck — especially when you're adding cooked food that hasn't been formulated to complement a raw diet. Raw feeding done well can be excellent, but done badly it creates gaps that cause real harm over time, and the difference is always balance and sourcing. To point you in the right direction: what size is your Springer, roughly how much raw are you feeding currently, and is the cooked portion something you're preparing at home or a commercial product?

That's a sensible approach, and at 7 she's entering the phase where variety and digestibility both start to matter a bit more. The risk with mixing raw mince with a commercial cooked product is that the cooked product assumes it's the whole diet — so it may already contain minerals like calcium and phosphorus at levels designed for 100% feeding. If your raw side is already delivering those minerals through bone content and offal, you can inadvertently over-supplement certain nutrients. The safest way to do this is to use a cooked product that's genuinely complementary rather than a complete meal. Can I ask — is your current raw including raw meaty bones or is it boneless mince with offal added separately? That changes the mineral picture quite a bit.

Right, so without consistent bone content your raw side is already potentially low on calcium and phosphorus — which means you're not actually over-supplemented, you may be under on those minerals. That actually makes a mixed diet more viable because a well-formulated complete cooked meal a few times a week will help plug those gaps rather than create new ones. For a 22kg active Springer, I'd recommend Nature's Menu Country Hunter Wet Dog Food — the pouches or cans. It's a complete, high-meat cooked product, genuinely high quality, and designed to work as a full meal. Because it's complete and nutritionally balanced to FEDIAF standards, feeding it two or three times a week alongside your raw days gives her real variety and fills the mineral gaps your current raw diet may have. Rotate the proteins — they do venison, rabbit, turkey — so she gets the texture and flavour change you're after, without you having to reformulate anything.

The idea that you can't mix raw and cooked in the same meal is largely a myth. The concern was about digestion speed differences, but dogs' digestive systems are highly acidic and handle mixed feeding without issue in the vast majority of cases. Where it matters is hygiene — raw meat needs the same food-safe handling regardless of what else is in the bowl. For your Springer, I'd actually keep them as separate meals on the same day rather than mixing in one bowl, not for digestive reasons but just to make portion tracking easier. Feed the Country Hunter as a full meal in the morning a few days a week, and keep her raw for the other meals. That way you know exactly what she's getting nutritionally.

Yes — joint support is worth thinking about now rather than when you see symptoms. Spaniels are prone to hip and elbow issues, and at 7 she's not old but she's not young either. Nature's Menu doesn't have added joint supplements, so if you're not already giving her an omega-3 source like a fish oil capsule a few times a week, add that in. It's anti-inflammatory and genuinely useful for joint health. Beyond that, her caloric needs may have dropped slightly compared to a few years ago — keep an eye on her waist definition and adjust portions before you have a weight problem rather than after. Otherwise you're in good shape: variety of protein, a complete commercial product filling nutritional gaps, and a dog that clearly has an engaged owner. That combination works well.