Pure Balance

I guess even before COVID-19 I lived in a restricted world. I've never seen national advertising for dog foods except at the Kibbles and Bits level. Oh, and right now I see ads for some kind of "fresh" food on tv - which can't be that fresh if they can ship it around to people - unless it's frozen, which it doesn't look to be.

I do agree that vets are not necessarily the best source of diet info. A vet friend told me years ago there were financial incentives to him from the manufacturers for pushing certain brands of dog food. I doubt that's any different today. I've read articles claiming that the only nutritional education vets get comes from the big dog food manufacturers, but I don't know if that's true or exaggerated, and I'm not sure it would be a bad thing anyway as I know companies like Purina do a lot of nutritional research, even if some of the kind of testing they do makes me queasy.

I also agree that if I got a puppy and its coat became dry and dandruffy, my first consideration would be diet. However, I wouldn't be flipping a puppy from one food to another frequently or abruptly.

LeoRose said:

You must not watch much TV, then, and aren't on Facebook. There is a TON of advertising out there.

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You are definitely right about Facebook. As far as I'm concerned the Masters of the Universe are going to have to take over the world without my help, which makes me inclined to forget how into it most of the rest of said world is. And probably right about tv, as all I have is network, which I watch maybe an hour a day on average, although there's as much advertising as programming. Chewy.com definitely must have a huge advertising budget because they blanket the stations I watch, but that's promoting their online sales, not a particular dog food. For that all I've seen is the one company, whose campaign can't be too effective because I can't remember the name, just that it's supposed to be fresh food. Name definitely isn't memorable.

With my own puppies, I always left them on the food the breeder fed until there was reason not to, and when I did rescue, I'd send the dog to foster or permanent home with several meals of what they'd been getting, but that doesn't seem to be the OP's case. When choosing kibble, I was most influenced by word of mouth from other dog owners, but then I belong to a dog club, go to training classes, and compete with my dogs, so dog people are my tribe so to speak, which isn't the case for a lot of people.

My only experience with Hills was with k/d for a cat. All the research in the world is worthless if your cat won't eat it, which my vet said is a pretty common attitude of cats toward k/d.

We are really derailing this thread, but I'll be quiet about cats after this. My experience was with my Toes (polydactyl). I treated her for the last 5 years of her life for chronic renal failure. At that time there was a Yahoo support group, and among their resources was a file with a list of low phosphorus cat foods. So that's what she ate because she would. The last year of her life she got to where all she'd eat was Fancy Feast, and there were a few of their canned foods that were low phosphorus. The one I remember was the beef, which was Toes' least favorite of the things she'd eat, but at least she would eat it. The cat specialist I took her to called it "kitty cocaine," but also said you have to feed them what they'll eat. Darling cat, made it to 20.

To at least add a little about dogs - that's true for them too. Fortunately for me with Rotties it's not a big problem. Mine would eat cardboard kibble if that's what was in the dish. I only once had a puppy who seemed to have a very un-Rottweiler-like picky appetite - until I took her off the admittedly first-class kibble the breeder had had her on. Evidently that was a case of her just plain not liking it although she must have eaten it better when she was with her littermates and feeling a little competition.