[pixiepunk]

www.flintriverranch.com - they do not charge any shipping. i scored one of their dog foods with the scoring system posted earlier in the thread, and they scored a 100.

[CrzyBritNAmerica]

Holy crapola! I have always fed my dog (and cats) Purina and I feed my dog Purina Beneful...it scored a flipping 17%! I went out today and bought a bag of Nutro Max Natural which is much better, but now reading this and seeing how high Natural Balance scored I think I want to try that! We've never even changed her food because I KNOW how awful that is, but I think I'll stick to this new one until they finish building the Petco here and I can get the Natural Balance. I mixed the last the Nutro with the last bit of her Purina and she actually seemed to prefer the Nutro!

And a side note...Bridgette (my dog) is looking at me like I am some kind of crazy person as I sit here at the computer with my bag of dog food on my lap...I guess to the dog this might be really strange!

[Captbob]

Originally Posted by Wisdombestowed

Any name brand will be good for a dog until their later years where they will probably require a more specialized diet.
I would trust anything with a name brand on the package.
As far as the meats are concerned, even the by-products are fine. Think of what a canine/wolf would eat in the wild. Muscle and organs, you name it they pretty much pick it clean and anything that comes natural is (according to most) a good thing. Rabbit, duck, venison, chicken, beef, you name it, it's all good. I would avoid soy ingredients when choosing a brand. Purina uses soy in some of their food and if you spend a little extra you can get pork in place of the soy from Hill's and Royal Canine. Soy = never good but 90% of the time won't do any kind of damage.
Omega 3 fatty acids (fish oils) and joint formulas in at LEAST maintenance doses can be very beneficial for the mid to large breeds. Just expect to pay more and as with most consumables, you get what you pay for.

Skip a couple of Starbucks a week, and most people can afford some good and healthy food for their dog.

[CrzyBritNAmerica]

I agree on the skipping Starbucks thing. I mean I am a college student (online classes) and I still plan to spend more on dog food if that's what it takes to keep Bridgette healthy. I think having a dog (or any pet) is a major responsibility and I personally would want to make sure I am doing everything in my power to keep her as healthy and happy as possible. We just switched to this new brand that's yeah, a little more than what we were paying fo before, but I feel better about it because I know she is eating much healthier now.

[lawlady]

In the scheme of things, we spend a fortune on Zavie's dog food. We buy Wellness for him. At first, my husband really protested the price, saying that any ol' dog food was good enough--didn't matter i bought the Wellness anyway. LOL! Now he sees how nice Zavie's coat is, how small his poop his, and just how generally healthy-looking he is, and hubby is a total convert. He even, on his own without me saying a thing, switched our cat over to Wellness cat food and didn't even bat an eye at the $17.00 price tag on the bag. Believe me, that's a huge accomplishment!!! LOL!

The last time he stopped at the feed store to buy some Wellness, this other man noticed the bag my husband was holding and told him, "Ya better watch out, 'cuz if you keep feeding your dog that stuff he's gonna out-live you!!!" I just thought that was cute!

I give my pup and my cat the same consideration that i give my human family members. I read the labels. I wouldn't feed them junk and expect them to be healthy, so why would i feed it to my pets? It's really quite simple for me.

Linda and Zavie

[cockapoolvr]

What does everyone think of Blue Buffalo.
Ben has been eating it lately. He was on dry Nutro All Natural Puppy because of the advise of a trainer, but it seemed to upset his stomach, he threw up several times, so we switched back to Blue Buffalo.
He likes it. What's your opinions?

[Benni]

Does anyone know anything about the dog food called Wellness?

[squirt1968]

It is one of the premiem foods. One of the posters on this thread said they feed wellness. I tried it and my dog refused it. I feed Natural Balance

[maximus]

First time poster to this forum.

I feed my German Shepherd puppy - now 14 weeks old - Canidae and am very happy with it. Here in Northern VA, it cost us $37+ for 40 pounds which is affordable for me.

If I could not afford it, I'd go with Costco's Kirkland Signature Chicken, Rice, and Vegetables which is probably the best value in terms of the ingredients. In fact, CaptBob's listing on this thread had it rated an "A" with a score of 110.

[EXBCMC]

I didn't want to quote the post that rated all the foods with grades. Outstanding! Thank you. (I thought a quote would take up too much space)

[EXBCMC]

Just bought two 40 lb bags of Canidae (sp?) The best part of the whole thing is the EASY open bag! Just lift the re-sealable flap. My God, what took so long to figuer that out! Here is So Calif I paid $33 per 40lb bag. I was very pleasantly surprised.

[Pomeraanians1587]

I'm glad that everyone knows whats good and bad now i hope. I have had a Pomeranian for 3 years now and i have fed it a 100% natural chicken jerky brand called Benniandpenni. I use to get them at Costco but i think they stop selling but i have just found there website and they sell them on there. They even have a lab sample on there website that shows that there treats are the best. If people are interested the website is benniandpenni.com

[timnbetsy]

Blue is a fantastic food. . . I would recommend it to anyone with a normal, healthy dog. Their ingredients are good and the processing of the life source bits is great!! Keep feeding it . . . I doubt you will go wrong!

[LMH]

I have a cane corso and I had no idea about dog food when I first got him. I started him off on Nutro-which I now know is not a great food. We went through many foods(my poor dog). I now know what to look for in dog food. For me the first 5 ingredients are the most important. there are cheaper foods that dogs do love. But just because a kid love's Mcdonalds everyday doesn't mean we should feed it to them. As long as the food has no kind of corn,soy,wheat,by-products or unspecified meat meal products it is probably pretty good food. I also add merricks canned food and fresh food to his meals. He is 150 lbs and his coat is very soft and shiny. He's two and people comment on how white his teeth are. Oh I feed him Canidae. I was feeding innova but I lost my job and couldn't afford it. Canidae is a very good and affordable food. I also read from a few sites that switching dog foods once or twice a year is good because it makes sure they are getting a balanced mix of nutrients. regardless of what any dog food says, they can not jam a full nutrition plan into one food. that's like saying here is a frozen dinner for humans that is competely balanced. Plus about 30% of the nutrients is killed off in the cooking process so I never understood why people say do not give supplements or extras to the food.

[cja75]

I rotate foods. A great tool is go to :
http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/dog_f...iews/index.php

It lists all the ingredients of ALOT of brands and rates them too. Also they explain the ratings. There a few sights around too that will list every ingredient used in dog food and explain what they are.

[Rowdy]

It took a few months to figure out the best foods for our dogs. We tried Canidae, Solid Gold, and Timberwolf Organics but they got diarrhea from all of them. I don't know if they were too rich. Doesn't matter. We finally settled on Flint River Ranch. I've been mixing the regular adult food with some of the lamb food. This seems to work great. No diarrhea. The dogs have great coats and good energy.

We even switched the cats over to FRR. They'd been on a mix of Purina and Meow mix. After just a few months on the food we really noticed a difference in their coats. Houston had been like a wire brush. Now he's got a fuller, softer coat. Wow. I feel guilty about their first 5 years on that crappy food.

[MyRalphie]

Hi

Please don't let those more expensive price tags deter you, because you need to feed a lot less of the good stuff! The cheaper foods with all the fillers go right through the animal anyway. Like somebody else said, it's like feeding your kids Mickey D's every day. The high premium foods are chock full of actual nutrients beneficial to the animal, so less pooh in the yard, too.

Rowdy, I can relate to guilt big time. But you can't blame yourself because who knows to dig up all the research on the Internet? We moved and were stuck with vets who push bad food (our real vet never did this) and all of a sudden our dogs were dropping like flies because of misdiagnosis and over-drugging. I finally wised up last January and began digging up research for our surviving dog. (They insisted on "their prescription" food for him and were actually calling our house about it, so at this point I got even more suspicious about them and began finding all the info myself).

[bryly27]

I posted this at a different forum and they said some of the same things that were mentioned here. So here was my post.

I know I am replying to this thread pretty late and I will just like the person whoever started this thread to know that I would rather feed my dog Science Diet and I, myself, already am using it. I understand that everybody here is totally against it but I have put a lot of research into this topic already and just wanted people to hear my point of view.

I have researched many different companies and I believe Science Diet is the best. I do not believe that Science Diet is in it for the money. If you guys know the history of Science Diet, you will understand. Science Diet from what I know is considered the oldest dog food makers. It started with a doctor who had a seeing eye dog which was suffering through kidney disease, something a lot of senior dogs go through. So he developed k/d, the first prescription diet for a dog. Then on, he decided to produce a line of food that would be the most nutritional for dogs. Now the company has over 150 vets, nutritionists that actually work for the product and continues to develop better nutrition.

I believe a lot of companies are more in it for the money than actually caring for pets. Because Science Diet can be found at many suppliers and it is a huge corporation does not mean they are in it for the money. They are more for promoting better nutrition for pet health so more people will use their product.

I had actually called the companies hot line one time and asked them about the by products they used in their food. What I was told was that they used intestines and not bones, beaks, claws, etc... They also told me that it was actually more expensive to use these ingredients. And to let everyone know, chicken meal contains chicken by products. Another I asked about was corn. And from what I knew before and from what they told me, corn is considered something that is actually nutritious for dogs. When the ingredient list says ground whole grain corn, the ground corn they are talking about is actually cooked which makes it highly digestible and is even considered more digestible than rice. I would also tell everyone please do not compare corn to the corn us humans eat. It is prepared much differently. Also corn is not considered a top cause of allergies. Although some dogs are allergic to corn, most dogs are more allergic to beef, wheat, chicken, etc... Also, if you take a look at some prescription diets, corn will be a top ingredient. And no it is not a filler.

One thing I noticed a lot from the other posts are that a lot of you guys do not know how to read labels. Everyone always focuses on ingredients and ingredients should not be the first thing you guys look at. A lot of companies have actually done product splitting which is used in some cases to change the line up of ingredients so it will attract more consumers. I remember looking at a bag that said lamb was the first ingredient, and the next three ingredients were different forms of rice. The guaranteed analysis is important to look at also but is hard to tell the facts when it only shows the min and max. The reason why companies do that is because they do not want to reveal the absolute values to other companies.

The main thing people should really focus on is the AAFCO statement found on every bag. This will be in fine print and people overlook it or either just do not seem to find the importance of the statement. There is two things to look at when reading the statement. One, it will either say that the food is formulated or animal tested. Two, it will show what life stage the food is suitable for. Statements that state that the food is animal tested is the foods that you should be looking for. Animal testing is a test that requires the company to do feeding trials to a certain amount of pets and they have to supervise their growth and maintenance. Animal feeding tests is actually really expensive and you only find it in very few foods. So if you want a animal tested food, make sure you read the AAFCO statement. Also you need to see what life stage the food is suitable for. If it is a puppy food, it should say puppy, if it is an adult food, it should say adult. But for senior foods, it will also say adult because AAFCO has not made a category for that yet. If you read anything that says all life stages or nutrient and profiles, you may want to stay away from those foods. If you guys all know, Nutro makes a product that claims to be Americas number 1 lamb meal and rice. If you look anywhere on that bag, you will not find a life stage anywhere. When you read the AAFCO statement, it will say it is an all life stage food. So everyone should be aware of companies that are more in it for the money.

So I would recommend Science Diet and I guess a lot of you guys can argue your views. I would not stick with smaller companies only because they are not going to have a lot of science to back up their practices and also they will not have much of a variety like Science Diet. If your dog has been doing great on other products, good for them. I am happy for them. If your dog is doing good on grocery brands, consider that an exception for them. I have talked to many people who fed their dogs grocery brands and they their dogs had kidney disease. For all you people out their, kidney disease is the number two disease for dogs next to oral. It is a very serious problem especially for senior dogs and people always say that it is because of old age, majority of the time it is bad nutrition. Foods that may cause this is foods with high levels of phosphorus.

So I would think twice about feeding my dog a low end grocery brand food. If you think that the food is too expensive, think about what is best for your dog and your dog should deserve the best. Think again before buying a dog if you think money is going to be an issue. Buying food is nothing compared to what you buy for yourself to eat. I love my dog and nutrition is very important. So when I heard most of you guys talking badly about premium food, I knew I had to reply back even though this thread is pretty old. I will urge you guys all to have your dogs go on Science Diet so they will be healthier and live a better life.

[RonE]

Do Hills' stockholders know they're not out to make money?

Thank you for your bold post. Please consider a little white space in the next one to make it easier to read.

[bryly27]

Originally Posted by RonE

Do Hills' stockholders know they're not out to make money?

Thank you for your bold post. Please consider a little white space in the next one to make it easier to read.

Sorry for making it so hard to read. I'll take your advice.

I forgot why but one of my friends actually looked up the net worth of Science Diet and it was worth more than any other dog food company. I would say Science Diet puts pets first and then money second. Science Diet donates a lot of food to animal shelters and even donated food for families with pets that were affected by the San Diego fire. They seem to definitely put pets first and at the same time, bank a lot of money.