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What is the best dry dog food for my Lab and mixed small breed puppy?

I have been feeding my 1year old Lab Purina dog chow, but read an Answer yesterday that this was a bad choice. I am also getting a small,terrier mix puppy this weekend and want to start her out on a good food. Any recommendations? Please don’t condemn me for my dog food choice – I know now it was a bad one. I researched it yesterday after seeing the Dogfood analysis link.

First I don’t think condemning you would be the right thing to do. Sounds like you care, and that is very commendable. I agree that Purina dog chow isn’t a good choice. I have tried it and I noticed that my dogs stool was very yellow (undigested corn) and very loose. If I were you, I simply would look at the dogs stool and let that determine what is the right food. It should be dark (It means it was digested well), firm and compact. Smaller dogs need smaller sized bits to eat. They have a hard time eating chunks that are large. I don’t like watering down the food if I can get away with it. It’s better for the dog’s teeth to have hard food to help remove tater. Read the dog food bag. The first three ingredients’ is what the majority of the food is made up of. I like feeding my dogs something with rice in it. It agrees with them better and they like it too. Corn is harder for dog to digest, but not necessarily bad. They just need more of it to get what they need. That is harder on your pocket and can possible lead to weight gain for the dog and makes lots of poop! Just buy smaller sizes of dog food till you see that the stool looks right, and you don’t have to feed the dog as much food to maintain a healthy weight. Also the dogs coat will have a healthier look to it with the right dog food as well.

Natural food for your dog

Good health keeps your pet smiling pretty
(ARA) – Our pets tend to eat the same way we do, which means – unfortunately – more cats and dogs suffer from unbalanced diets, obesity, food allergies and other health problems related to nutrition.
How to Solve Dog Allergies

The Truth About Pet Food

Most people are aware of the benefits of organic food, which is food grown without chemical fertilisers or pesticides. Nutrient content is much richer. Although supermarket food looks good, generally, its nutrient content is very poor.

If organic food is good for people, is it also good for dogs?

A resounding YES, is the answer to that…

But!

There’s always a but isn’t there?

You need to look at the whole picture.

If you are buying the commercial organic dog food, then you really aren’t getting what you’re paying for.

Why not?

If you look at what goes into commercial dog food, the benefits that the organic origins give to the food are swamped by all the other chemicals.

Let’s look at the meat content of dog food first. The source for the bulk of commercial pet food comes from rendering plants. These take the waste from slaughter houses (heads, hooves, intestines, etc), road kill, euthanised pets from vets and zoos and dead animals from farms. If the slaughter house rejects come from some organic farms, that’s helpful. But the overall mix is far from organic.

Even if the protein comes from organic waste meat, is that meat certified organic, or has the supplier just put an organic label on the packet to lure in unsuspecting buyers?

So the end product should be certified organic dog food. Not just one ingredient.

Now lets look at the dried food. Meat (or more likely meat by-products, the end product from rendering plants) is kept indefinitely at room temperature. The only way you can do this is by adding a strong preservative.

As there are no laws governing the quality of dog food in most countries, any preservative can be used. Even those considered unfit for consumption. Such as ethoxyquin. And formaldehyde.

Both these preservatives cause huge health problems simply by being in contact with them. Imagine what it does to your dog’s health if he consumes them, and on a regular basis.

That alone makes the idea of organic dog food of little importance.

Even when the label on the packet proudly proclaims that no preservatives have been added, they are simply stating that they haven’t added preservatives. The rendering plant may have done it for them.

Logic tells you that meat cannot be kept indefinitely at room temperature any other way.

Because the rendering plants boil the ‘food’ for long periods at high pressures, there is little nutrient content left.

To address this shortfall, isolated and synthetic nutrients are added. Neither humans nor dogs can utilise isolated and synthetic nutrients. These should come from the food, in a complex and balanced form.

I suggest that organic dog food is no different from any other commercial pet food.

Pedigree Commercial – Echo

What is the best low calorie/lite adult dry dog food available?

Reason: Upcoming dog show in 3 months time. Needs to lose 10-15lbs.

solid gold is a good food so I wouldn’t necessarily recommend switching food, just feed a little less.

If you do want to feed a better quality food, look at Innova. They have recently introduced a reduced fat dog food because many owners complain they cannot find the time to exercise their dog more or the dog whine’s because its hungry.

Innova’s Reduced Fat formual is one of the few on the market that still has fresh, human grade meat as the first two ingredients. Most companies use low quality grains to lower the fat and increase the profit margins of food.

Check out the ingredients of the Innova:
Turkey
Chicken
Barley
Brown Rice
Potatoes
Rice
Chicken Meal
Pea Fiber
Herring Meal
Chicken Fat
Flaxseed Meal
Natural Flavors
Apples
Carrots
Cottage Cheese
Sunflower Oil
Alfalfa Sprouts
Egg
Garlic
Vitamins/Minerals

The fat is only 8.5% and the protein is 18%.

Guide Dog Training : Guide Dog Training: Best Breeds

Royal Canin dog fod?

So I just got back from a visit to the vet because of my dogs ear infections. He said that he thinks it is allergies and that I should switch to royal canin hypoallergenic veterinary formula. I have her on innova right now which I know is a good food and shows it in it’s ingredients. He gave me a bag of the royal canin and I am very disappointed in the meat content in this food. Meat doesn’t show up in the ingredients list until the third ingredient and it is in the form of chicken fat! I have heard that royal canin is a good food, so I am just curious what you all think. How can it be a good food with ingredients like that? It is just because it is the hypoallergenic formula? My vet was adamant about me switching to this food but I want to be feeding her something that is really good for her…not just fillers. The first three ingredients in the food are: Rice, Soy protein isolate hydrosolate and chicken fat.

vets are not nutritionists. They sell prescription diests because that’s what they sell.

I personally do no like royal canin.. they have the “breed specific” diets which I think are a fad thing.

I would reccommend California Natural.. in particular, the herring and sweet potato formula, to rule out food allergies. They have very few ingredients. Its also from the same company that makes Evo.

Most people don’t stop to think about the food they are giving their dog. The colourful packs on the laden supermarket shelves are normally as far as people give dog food a thought. You may be one of them, but are now branching out and looking for something a bit healthier.

Believe me, the packs can look tempting and with smiling veterinarians and dog breeders on the cover, you’re not that hard to convince.

But stop for a moment and consider a wild dog’s diet. Dogs are naturally pack animals and so they hunt in packs. They can bring down a large animal, as large as a cow, with their combined efforts. Then they all gather round, with much growling and snarling and consume most of the carcass, bones and all. Probably the only parts left is the hide and hooves.

Whether or not you can accept this idea, that’s how dogs evolved. And the wild dogs still manage very well. This is the most healthy dog food. There is nothing that can beat it.

Man, with his puny pseudo scientific ideas of improving on the natural diet of dogs is going down a dead end. You can’t.

Period.

There is only one type of healthy dog food. And that is the one which so closely resembles a wild dog’s diet, as to be virtually the same as far as health benefits are concerned.

Lets look at some of the differences between a wild dog’s diet and commercial dog food, a diet most dogs exist on (I won’t say live, as it’’s hardly a life).

A wild diet, a healthy dog food, consists of:
raw food
lots of raw bones
internal organs are consumed, but these are scarce compared with the muscle meat
carbohydrates which are limited to the stomach contents, so is small in the overall content

A typical commercial dog food consists of:
cooked food (many vitamins, enzymes and other nutrients are destroyed by cooking)
the meat is of poor (often extremely poor) quality (humans get the good stuff)
carbohydrates, in particular sugar, are a major part of the food – it’s cheap and bulks out the ‘meat’
the food is fortified with strong preservatives (not allowed in human food for their dangerous impact on health) – DESPITE WHAT THE LABEL SAYS
to try to redress the nutritional imbalance, isolated and synthetic nutrients are added – nutrients which can’t be properly absorbed and utilised when they are in isolation, or if they are synthetic

So in your search for a healthy dog food, keep firmly in mind the diet of a wild dog. It’s OK to take your time to get used to the idea. If you find the idea repulsive, just go slowly. Try to replace one thing at a time. Just keep in mind that dogs have evolved over millions of years, on this diet. Humans have only been producing (poor quality) commercial dog food for a few decades.

If you don’t like the idea of raw meat for your dog, that’s your issue, not his.

I also suggest that you keep in mind the concept that most people are lured by price. With the best will in the world, if a commercial pet food manufacturer suddenly started to produce quality pet food, because it would be more expensive, do you think it would be a sell-out?

That would only be possible if people had already started to reject the current commercial dog food and were now looking for a healthy dog food, so were prepared to pay a little more.

However, if you make your own dog food, you won’t need to find the extra cash. Not only is a homemade, healthy dog food economical to produce, it has an enormous impact on the health of your dog, often beyond your wildest dreams.

Hypoallergenic dog food, all natural dog biscuit recipe

What brand of dog food for puppies do you think is the best.?

I was looking at some puppy foods online and I found a few that seemed good. But what kind would you recommend? thanks.

Wellness, solid gold, halo, blue, castor and pollux(organix)
Actually, the ceaser millans food is not that bad depending on the formula. Stay away from the weight control formula, but the other two are very similar to castor and pollux.

What breed of dog do you have? If you have a medium, large, or giant breed, go with an ADULT dog food at or below 25% protein, preferably 24% protein. Feed that for the first two years of life, if you want after that, the other higher protein foods are good to feed like wellness Core.
And keep exercise light for the first two years.

http://www.bigdogsporch.com

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