what food should i feed?..help

[Frances Grady]

i need to change to a heathier brand of food and would like your advise i was thinking of solidgold royal canin,natural choice or natures reciepe i did a little bit of research but i can tell which is best they seem to have mostly the same ingerdients i want to stay away from foods with BHA if possible and any other liver or cancer causing product please no Innova that brand is not avalable here i am currently feeding iams and would also like feedback from those who have or are feeding it thanks

[Frances Grady]

i ment cant tell which is best

[Grace Erick]

Frances, you have a HUGE dog!!!! You may want to balance the quality with price, so you don't spend a fortune, but that is up to you. A good food that is supposed to not cost a lot is Natural Balance. It's not called a food for bid dogs, but according to their site, it caters to big dog problems with added taurine which is apparantly something a big dog can use.

That is a good food and better than Nutro if that's what you meant by natural choice. Nutro makes 3 levels of food from bad to somewhat better, I think it goes Max, Natural choice and Ultra. Don't confuse Natural Choice by Ultra with **** Van Patten's Natural Balance. I don't feed hard food, but I think they may be close in price and I believe the NB is better.

There is Innova which is most likely more expensive and is found in better pet food stores, not the grocery stores or big chain stores. You would have to go to www.naturapet.com for Innova to use the site's store locator to find a store near you. Mostly likely, that store will sell other good quality food. Some of it depends on what you can spend. Then there is Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover's Soul, which you would also have to do a search for their site and check out where the store is located and how much they want for the food.

There really are quite a few good foods. Sometimes it all depends on what your dog will eat. Just because a food is good doesn't mean your dog will like the taste. All dogs are different in what they think tastes good to them.

Whatever food you choose, you will want to mix the old with the new so your dog does not get diarreah which they sometimes do when you switch.

[Grace Erick]

Also, at the natura site which is for Innova food, you can do a comparison of different foods they have listed. It's good to see an animal protein as the first two ingredients or the food tends to be all grain.

[aussiesmum]

i need to change to a heathier brand of food and would like your advise i was thinking of solidgold royal canin,natural choice or natures reciepe i did a little bit of research but i can tell which is best they seem to have mostly the same ingerdients i want to stay away from foods with BHA if possible and any other liver or cancer causing product please no Innova that brand is not avalable here i am currently feeding iams and would also like feedback from those who have or are feeding it thanks

From that list I would say either Solid Gold or Royal Canin (Natual Blend, not Maxi). Those are the best two on your list.

Natural Choice and Nature's Recipe both look good, but not as good as SG or RC-natural Blend. I would put RC (Maxi) under Natural Choice and Nature's Recipe.

That being said, where dod you come up with your list?

[Frances Grady]

from foods that are available in the bremerton petco store that seem to be the best and that ive heard of before they do have some ive never heard of before but that makes my leery i thought iams must be bad if they stock it right next to purina and pedigree and the rest like science diet and nutro to gether and the rarer brands together and also iams and purina are displayed at the back last row of the store

[Rebekah Hartman]

The Petco stores I've been in also carry Natural Balance (**** van Patten), which Grace mentioned above and is considered a very good food. You might try looking on websites for some of the better foods for their store locators - I've found that the smaller pet stores that sell the better foods also have better prices. It makes a difference (especially with a big dog)! We have a Rottie/Shepherd puppy, so I'm taking everything into consideration. Also note how many calories are in each cup of the food and compare that way - Innova has 500 kcal/cup where many foods have closer to 375 - that makes a big difference in how much you feed.

Chicken Soup for the Dog Lovers' Soul - http://www.chickensoupforth epetloverssoul.com and Canidae - http://www.canidae.com are both considered good foods which I found to be on the more economical end.

I'm switching (don't shoot me) to Kirkland Super Premium Chicken & Rice from Costco. It is extremely cheap, but is a "decent" food. You can look at the post "Ingredient List" under the Dog Food forum if you're curious. It costs $15.99 for 40 lbs. and my puppy has continued to have runny stools on the other premium "health" foods we've tried. You'd have to have access to a Costco in order to get this, though - it is definitely a much better food than Iams.

[aussiesmum]

Natural Balance is considered a "super premium" food, as with Chicken Soup and Candie (and solid gold and RC-NB). I would definatley agree with the idea of looking at how much you have to actually feed your dog. A better quality food generally means you have to feed less. So a 50lb bag might last 10 days with iams but 15 with Solid gold. it is about seeing how much your "daily feed cost" is.

[Sarah Moore]

Frances-

I would put Nature's recipie at the very bottom of the list of food's you suggested. here are the ingredients for the adult food:

Lamb meal, ground rice, ground whole wheat, cracked pearled barley, chicken fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols and citric acid), lamb digest, tomato pomace, sodium tripolyphosphate, flax seed, potassium chloride, choline chloride, vitamins (vitamin E supplement, L-ascorbyl-2-polyphosphate (source of vitamin C), inositol, niacin supplement, vitamin A supplement, d-calcium pantothenate, thiamine mononitrate, beta-carotene, riboflavin supplement, pyridoxine hydrochloride, menadione sodium bisulfite complex (source of vitamin K activity), vitamin D3 supplement, folic acid, biotin, vitamin B12 supplement), minerals (zinc proteinate, ferrous sulfate, zinc oxide, iron proteinate, copper sulfate, copper proteinate, manganese proteinate, manganous oxide, calcium iodate, sodium selenite), poultry digest, yucca schidigera extract, rosemary extract.

2 that jumped out at me immediately were lamp digest and poulty digest. It is best to avoid ingredients that list things like "poultry" vice chicken or turkey since there is no known origin of that meat. This is a good website that explains what these ingredients are:

http://www.naturalpetsystem s.com/petfoodingredients.h tm

scroll down to ingredients to avoid. Also, wheat is a common allergy source and no recommended to feed everyday, even if you dog doesn't have an allergy to it (its hard to digest).

I see lots of other people are responding as I type this, so for what it is worth, I feed 2 of my dogs Canidae and one Kirkland Chicken and Rice, and they all love their food and are doing great (shiny coats, good stools). Canidae is fairly economical: i pay $26 for a 40 lb bag, and that is here in So. Cal so it might even be cheaper up in WA (I'm originally from WA, Seattle area, but I have been to Bremerton as well, many friends in the Navy :))

Hope that helps!!!

[Grace Erick]

Hi Frances,

Royal Canin does breed specific food. I didn't notice your breed there, but this is what's in lab food and it stinks as well as what's in their Chihuahua blend that I checked for my chi:

Chicken meal, brown rice, corn gluten, oatmeal, barley, brewers rice, chicken fat (naturally preserved with mixed tocopherols), natural chicken flavor, beet pulp (sugar removed), cellulose, fish oil, sodium silico aluminate, soya oil, potassium chloride, sodium tripolyphosphate, salt, choline chloride, chicory extract, borage oil, taurine, calcium carbonate, inositol, niacin supplement, vitamin E supplement, L-carnitine, glucosamine hydrochloride, ascorbic acid (source of vitamin C), chondroitin sulfate, calcium pantothenate, marigold extract, tyrosine, zinc oxide, pyridoxine hydrochloride (source of vitamin B6), rosemary extract, thiamine mononitrate (source of vitamin B1), riboflavin supplement (source of vitamin B2), zinc proteinate, iron sulfate, manganous oxide, vitamin A supplement, manganese proteinate, folic acid, copper sulfate, copper proteinate, biotin, calcium iodate, vitamin D3 supplement, sodium selenite, vitamin B12 supplement.

One animal protein listed, corn gluten is not good, don't know what they put in their chicken flavor, I'm not sure how digestible oatmeal is, brewers rice isn't great, what is cellulose, plant matter? What is the source of the fish oil? Fish oil if poor quality can contain mercury. This food and other they sell are too much grain and bad ingredients, and suspect ingredients.

Sarah, good catch! Lamb digest and poultry digest, yuck!!! Tomato pomace is not good either. Tomatoes are not good for dogs nor is this tomato filler. Then there is wheat, though ground is not supposed to be highly digetible by dogs.

I just don't understand why these companies make this disgusting food like Royal Canin and Purina etc. People trust their names like I did when I thought feeding my dog canned Eukanuba was THE BEST!!!! Then Nature's Recipe, what a nice name. It sounds so inviting. It's all in the advertising.

[Rebekah Hartman]

Just to clarify, tomato plant is dangerous for dogs. Supposedly tomato is okay and some very good foods include tomato in their foods (e.g., Innova). I wouldn't write off a food just for including "tomatoes" in their ingredient list. "Tomato pomace", on the other hand...what?! I'm not trying to say that that food is fine (I highly doubt it), but I know Innova is probably one of the best foods out there and they do a lot of research before formulating their foods. You can definitely pick apart a food's ingredients to the point where you are left with hardly any options for what to feed. Hope this is helpful and doesn't just add to the confusion!

[Grace Erick]

Hi Rebekah,

Susan from the old Doggiedoor said tomatoes are not good because they belong in the nightshade family along with eggplants and other veggies. It's just the tomato pomace along with everything adds up to too many bad things in the Nature's recipe. I have read that the green of the tomato plant is very bad as I think you did too from your post.

I think it would depend on where the tomato source falls on the ingredient list with Innova. I don't know what form it's in or why they put it in there. I can call, but I have to post my taxes for today's date.

I read this one woman gave her dog spaghetti sauce on pasta. Now the tomato is suspect, then there must be onion in the sauce. Also, if I could feed tomato, it's acidic anyway, so I would tend to stay away from it.

This is the thing, you have a good or great food with a suspect ingredient which I agree shouldn't necessarily put it at the bottom of the list.