Can someone make sense out of this...

[Kendall Aliza]

At my local dog food store and I found out they are no longer selling Chicken Soup! :( So the guy who works there suggested I try PMI Exclusive and he gave me this arguement:
The top premium dog food brand Candae? (it starts with a C, I just cant remember what its called), 60% more of it passed through the dog (not adsorbed) than their PMI Exclusive brand. So why feed your dog such expensive food when he is only absorbing such a small percentage?
I didnt really buy into it because hes obviously pushing this food for a reason and I tend to believe that you get what you pay for... Can anyone explain/disprove his arguement and its legitimacy? Doesnt your body absorb what it needs and then the rest of it just passes through you? So could the dogs body be absorbing what it needed, and because Candae has more nutrients (or whatever) it doesnt absorb as much as it would with the Exclusive? Does that make sense?

[Grace Erick]

Kendall, I can make sense out of this all right. This store is pushing a food that they may get for less and sell for more and make a bigger profit than when they sold Chicken Soup which is far more superior to PMI.

I checked out PMI and they have to different products lines. One is worse than the other. Here is what's in their best food, which is the Exclusive line:


INGREDIENTS: Chicken, Chicken Meal, Cracked Pearl Barley, Corn Gluten Meal, Whole Grain Rice, Oatmeal, Chicken Fat (preserved With Mixed Tocopherols), Beet Pulp, Egg Product, Flax Seed, Natural Chicken Flavor, Dried Chicory Root, Potassium Chloride, Salt, Choline Chloride, Vitamin E Supplement, Glucosamine Hydrochloride, Iron Proteinate, Zinc Proteinate, Copper Proteinate, Ferrous Sulfate, Zinc Sulfate, Copper Sulfate, Potassium Iodide, Thiamine Mononitrate. Manganese Proteinate, Chondroitin Sulfate, Manganese Oxide, Ascorbic Acid, L-Carnitine, Vitamin A Supplement, Biotin, Calcium Pantothenate, Manganese Sulfate, Sodium Selenite, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride,Vitami n B 12 Supplement, Menadione Dimethylprimidinol Bisulfite, Riboflavin, Vitamin D Supplement, Folic Acid.

Corn gluten is not good, whole rice is not as digestible as ground rice, and beet pulp is just used as a filler. This is not the worst food out there, but it's not great either and Chicken Soup is far superior.

Then they have another line called Premium and it has corn as a first ingredient, then later on has corn gluten. Another bag of their food that I think is called Prime has meat listed which is really bad when they don't tell you what the meat is, and it has corn again.

So out of there two lines of food by this one manufacturer one is barely passable and the other is just plain crap!

Go to the Chicken Soup site and use their store locator if you haven't already and see where else they sell Chicken Soup. I feed my dog the canned food plus other brands of canned food and have to drive 20 minutes to a feed store to get the Chicken Soup which she loves. Also, if you find a store and it's not too close, call in advance, because they may only sell canned CS, so it would be a wasted trip, but also if they sell CS canned, they may order the hard food if you ask them.

If you can't find a store that sells the Chicken Soup, come back and ask for other suggestions, because the people here will have plenty to give you as alternatives. One may be Natural Balance by **** Van Patten which is sold in Petco. My Petsmart does not sell it for whatever reason, and I think it will be close in price to the CS.

Bye, Grace

[Grace Erick]

www.naturapet.com

Here is a site where you can compare some foods that are listed. Not all the good foods are listed here. This is the Natura site and they make Innova which is a good hard food, but on the more expensive side.

If you should switch your dog's food to something else, mix some of the old in with the new for a while or else dog's tend to get diarreah if you just change foods in one day.

The food you are thinking about is Canidae and it may be listed at the natura site for comparison. I do hear that if a food is highly digestible, then a dog will have small poops, but I don't know what is in Canidae off hand to say if it's has digestible ingredients or not. I can't imagine it has worse ingredients than the PMI.

Also, even if a food is good, it does not mean your dog will eat it. Some dogs prefer certain foods over others. Just because they eat it does not mean it's good and a dog can do okay on bad food, because symptoms of feeding bad food don't show up right away.

[Missy Stewart]

This is just a response to your question about a dog absorbing the nutrients out of its food

Yes; a dog’s body will only absorb what it needs (or what it can identify or break down) and then passes the rest through. This is why foods that are heavy in fillers (such as corn, most grains, rices, and bi-products) are not very nutritious. Dogs do not utilize these foods like our own bodies; they do not need the carbs from the grains or rices. As a whole, these ingredients are mainly passed through as waste.

So if you are feeding a food with meat as the main ingredient, the dog will absorb more nutrition (per cup full) than if you were feeding a food like I mentioned above. That is why you often feed less of a high quality food. The dog's body does not need to weed through as much waste to get the proper nutrition.

Just an interesting point. I feed a raw diet to Sonny. And the recommended portion sizes for a dog eating raw is between 3-7% of the dogs body weight (depending on the dogs level of activity). Sonny is a 15 pound Jack Russell. He is EXTREMELY active and exercises 2-3 hours a day) He eats roughly 8 oz of raw food per day. So while the food is expensive, I do not have to feed as much. It some ways, it equals out.

[Vanessa Lee]

The top premium dog food brand Candae? (it starts with a C, I just cant remember what its called), 60% more of it passed through the dog (not adsorbed) than their PMI Exclusive brand.

This could simply be the result of the difference in the amount of fiber and/or type of fiber between these foods. Higher fiber can account for bulkier stool without necessarily indicating that the other nutrients in the food are not as digestible or as well utilized as a food with less fiber.