Keeping Your Hound Healthy: Five Top Dry Dog Food Brands

If you’ve decided to feed your dog dry food and you’re deciding which brand to give them, it’s well worth spending that little bit more. Of course you don’t have to shell out huge amounts: if you buy your dog food online you can often get bulk discounts for premium brands such as Symply dog food or Barking Heads, which tend to use more natural ingredients and contain the right nutrients to keep your pet healthy.

Here are five of the top dog food brands we would recommend:


Orijen: Orijen dog food is a family owned business and its biscuits are carefully manufactured using fresh ingredients with a regional slant. It follows the Biologically Appropriate concept, including only whole foods which dogs are naturally programmed to eat and excluding ingredients such as cereals, which they are not. Its offer includes a special line for puppies and its latest range, ‘Orijen 80:20’, which is well-balanced from a nutritional standpoint as it contains 80% meat and 20% fruit and vegetables.


Symply: Symply dog food is one of the most popular brands among dog lovers. The company uses 100% natural ingredients with no preservatives, so you can be sure your pet won’t be ingesting anything harmful. It also has a higher-than-average meat content which means your dog will feel fuller for longer and a sack of food will hence be more economical. It has a great range or flavours, with Puppy and Senior versions also on offer.


Barking Heads Dog Food: This dog food also uses only natural ingredients, which again is great for your dog’s overall health. However, it specialises in dog foods for pets with more specific dietary needs. Its Lamb range, for example, is very easy to digest and so is appropriate for those dogs with weak digestive systems. It even offers special ‘slimming’ ranges for overweight dogs.


James Wellbeloved: Each variety of James Wellbeloved dog food contains a single source of meat protein such as turkey, lamb, duck or ocean white fish. The company avoids artificial ingredients and foods and all its products are hypoallergenic, which means they will not provoke intolerances.


K9: The K9 Natural brand is actually imported from New Zealand but it has gained popularity in the UK thanks to its innovative 100% raw, freeze-dried dog food. Based on the diet of the grey wolf, the domestic canine’s closest relative, it is free from any potentially harmful ingredients such as antibiotics, hormones, preservatives or bulking agents. It contains 85% real meat, bone and blood, 15% fruit, vegetables, raw eggs and garlic.

How To Be A Successful Bodybuilder

The key to successful bodybuilding lies mainly in the mind. To get anywhere, you have to have the will to succeed, be disciplined and force yourself to stick to strict exercise and diet habits. This sport is not for everybody, but this is what makes it all the more rewarding when you can count yourself as one of the best. If you are looking to get into bodybuilding, there are plenty of things you can do to reach your full potential, from working out the right exercise routine to taking supplement such as whey protein powder. 

Here are some areas to focus on:

Set Goals: The first thing to do, before you start bodybuilding, is to decide what you want to get from it. Are you more concerned about losing fat, gaining muscle or gaining strength? Do you want to prepare for competitions? You can’t go into any highly disciplined sport with only a vague idea of what you want to achieve. Once you have set yourself goals, it’s easier for you or your trainers to work out a plan to reach them. 

Exercise Plan: Bodybuilding exercise routines are a lot more complex than the majority of people suppose. Rather that doing the same thing each time, you have to keep it varied and work on separate muscle groups, giving the others time to rest. It’s hard work because it’s necessary for bodybuilders to provide complete stimulation to their muscles by lifting very heavy weights. If possible, hire a personal trainer to devise a routine for you as they are skilled at showing clients how to get the most from their bodies.

Diet: A bodybuilder needs to gain weight, but this has to be muscle weight rather than fat! To feed your body properly and give your muscles a chance to grow you need to up your protein intake. One of the most efficient ways to do this is to drink whey protein powder shakes as these are easy to take with you wherever you go and enter your system quickly. Take vitamins and avoid junk foods which are high in salt and sugar. Your body can’t process these into muscle so they are essentially dead calories. Stopping yourself eating crisps, ice-cream etc is where your mental strength comes into play!

Rest: It’s now recognised that when it comes to work-outs, quality is more important than quantity – so aim for an intense training session three or four times a week rather than pumping iron every day. Your muscles grow during repose, so if you are constantly working them they will have no time to do this and a lot of your hard work will have been for nothing.

Finding a Job in Berkshire

There are many jobs in Berkshire that are currently available for people to apply for. These job roles spread across all different industries and there are many vacancies for different candidate levels.

Regardless of whether you have a clear idea of the industry you wish to work in or not, one of the most important steps to take is to ensure your curriculum vitae is up to date. This document, which is most commonly known as a CV, will be asked for regardless of the level of job you are applying for. A CV will provide general information about yourself and your career; for example a high level overview of skills and also previous key work experience. 

Another majorly important point when attempting to gain employment is to ensure that you are fully aware of what a job is offering before you apply. An application form should include information about yourself but also why you are interested in the role and the knowledge you have of the industry.

One of the critical aspects to ensuring you are successful in securing a job is through performing well within an interview. How interviews are structured and carried out will be dependent upon the type of job as well as the industry. In order to be successful in an interview it is important to have a good understanding of why you want the job and the skills that you can bring to the role. Some specialist roles will require advanced knowledge and therefore such jobs will not be open for all.

The jobs in Berkshire vary in types of work; there are a variety of full times and part time roles available. Many jobs will often require some form of relevant work experience and people often find this difficult to gain. One of the best ways of increasing your employability and gathering work experience is through doing voluntary work. There are many different volunteering opportunities that can be very beneficial when searching for jobs.

Finding a job can be incredibly difficult, especially at times where there is a reduced number of vacancies available. In order to be successful it is crucial to have a good CV and to gather as much relevant work experience as possible.

Do You Run A Sports Club Or Group? How Good Are Your First Aid Skills?

If you’ve ever had the misfortune to visit your local A&E Department late on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon you’ll already be aware what a haven it is for sports injuries. People with torn ligaments, strains, sprains, breakages, muscle tears . . . it really is a case of the walking wounded.

Unfortunately sports injuries are an all too common occurrence whether you are an amateur sports person or a professional. It goes with the territory I’m afraid. If you are someone who’s in charge of a sports club or group and you are not a qualified first aider, it might be an idea to brush up on your first aid knowledge now with first aid training books.

It’s all too easy to offload the responsibility for first aid and leave it to someone else. But if an accident should occur and you are the first one on the scene, the injured party will be looking to YOU to take charge. If for example you were summoned to a 5-a-side football pitch where someone was lying unconscious on the ground. What would you do next?

Often the first few minutes following an incident can be critical – and if it’s really serious – waiting for the emergency services to arrive before taking action may not be an option. For people not trained in first aid, there will of course be a reluctance to get involved lest you injure the patient further. However, given a basic overview of how the body works and the main types of illness and injury you are likely to be confronted with, will give you the confidence to deal with such a situation.

First aid training books are an ideal (and inexpensive) way to get you started on the rudiments of first aid. You’ll quickly learn how to assess the casualty and what action to take immediately – and just as importantly – what not to do.

Contrary to what some people believe, first aid is not difficult to administer. It’s simply a question of remaining calm, reassuring the patient, and doing the right things at the right time. In other words, following a well-defined procedure. You will also develop your people skills and ability to organise others in what could be a fraught and stressful situation.

First aid training books will equip you to deal with all kinds of emergencies should the worst happen. And you may wish to continue your education with practical on site or remote training, or an accredited course leading to a qualification.

The Benefits Of Niche Market E-Commerce

With the huge competition online, making a success of a new e-commerce business can be a challenge to say the least. Using experienced ecommerce web designers is a great way to get your website off to a flying start, but you need a strong and distinctive product range as a base. One way to maximise your chances is to set up in a niche market of which you have some in-depth knowledge. A niche market is one which offers specialist goods to a relatively small and select client base. Here are some of the reasons why you may want to consider this:

Greater Focus: If you have a more concentrated group of clients it can be much easier to focus both on growth and on the improvement of the products themselves. If you are supplying a particularly specialist type of item then the clients will probably be a little more discerning but it also allows you to become an expert in one area rather than spreading yourself too thinly. Ultimately, you can provide a better service and increase your profits. You can also develop a unique product range because R&D efforts will be more focused.

Marketing Is Simpler: There are so many avenues to pursue with online marketing that it can become overwhelming. Knowing that you have a select group of customers to target simplifies things a great deal. You know their specific needs and how to address them. You should also know how to locate them and can advertise on niche websites or business directories. If you are serving a niche market it also becomes much easier to build up a solid client database for email marketing purposes.

Better Customer Service: If you have hired ecommerce web designers they should have built you a user-friendly website with easy search and payment functions. Added to this, you can be confident that you are going to provide visitors to your website with the service they need because you should know your niche market inside-out. Companies which serve many different sectors will find it more difficult provide that specialist knowledge and advice to make them stand out.

Less Competition: Lastly, if you are serving a smaller pool of customers then it also stands to reason your competitors will be fewer in number too. This gives you a great chance of maintaining a higher position in search engine rankings when it comes to SEO, which should also mean you gain a steady number of visitors to your site. As long as you keep your customer services standards high and pricing competitive you should be able to build up a loyal and long-term client base.