Food dilema. Does anyone really know?

mjacobs

I am not sure what to do. We feed our dogs Nutro and I see there is some controversy about Nutro and suspicious deaths. Was considering switching to Canidae but now I see there is some controversy with them. Looked at Taste of the Wild and they also are under scrutiny. What is up? Is there any dog food out there that is not under question? Supposedly Canidae and TOTW are linked to Diamond foods that produced tainted food several years ago.

weim2mom · Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 10:33 pm Post subject:

Anything other than Nutro. It's terrible.

I've heard so many different opinions on Canidae, but all are generally good.

h20fwlkillr · Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 1:39 am Post subject:

Feed what your dog does well on, is in your price range and is readily available. For every dog that has had problems w/ a particular food, there are thousands that haven't. IMO the web has made a lot of info available, some good , but much of it is stuff blown out of proportion or outright lies. There is way too much mis-information about dog food.

Aces-Wild · Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 7:33 am Post subject:

poisonivvy · Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 10:05 am Post subject:

And there's been recalls for Timberwolf (a highly expensive food), and rumors that it may not be truly organic.

I'd love to feed raw, but am terrified of meat myself. So I do what others have mentioned, and rotate through food. One-two months per each brand.

I rotate between: Wellness Core, EVO, Timberwolf, Canidae. I'm not sure if i'll keep Canidae in the mix or not. It's still TBD.

LunaBrown · Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 10:23 am Post subject:

h20fwlkillr · Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 12:40 pm Post subject:

anne · Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 1:05 pm Post subject:

Beef is one of the highest on the allergy list for dogs. A little bit of common sense and some basics about dog food is usually enough for someone to make an informed decision about dog food. People stress out about dog food so much, and yet they manage to feed their own children and have some basic knowledge about human nutrition. It isn't rocket science. I personally feed raw, and it's gaining acceptance but still controversial... I can explain WHY I do this, and not all people will agree, but dog food is definitely a personal choice and not all foods that work for some dogs will work on others. For instance, I like the idea of EVO but it doesn't work for my dogs. Other commercial brands are fine for my dogs and they have all done fine on products like Kasco which I think has a pretty crappy ingredient list. I think they do best on raw though.

hannibalandalice

Hi there, I have a 9 month old girl weim named alice. She was on nutro when we got her and her stools were never great. We did the proper transition to wellness cause our shiba(hannibal) is on it. It got worse and she had the runs and blood in it. My husband and I immediately took her to the emergency vet. They found a large trace of garidia and put her on medication. I spent days online at at various sites inc. consumer affairs also, and found other people who had issues with nutro. Very similar to her problem and also during the petco nutro recall that they denied and said was just an ingredient issue(not being able to get it), point is I'm convinced it's the nutro when hannibal was on nutro he had the dry heave problem and threw up yellow, I switched him to wellness chicken and no problems. Alice is now on canidae from the advice of another pet food store called petquaters. I needed something similar to nutro because wellness was definately too rich for her and so we went with canidae. alice has had the most firm stools ever. Her coat is super soft, softer then hannibals( I hate to admit considering it's cheaper than wellness.) I tried to transition him to canidae and he had what appeared to be dry heave again but not along wth any vomit. It's hard because what I thought would be great for alice since hannibal was on it, wasn't and cost us nearly 200 dollars in vet bills. I will never feed another one of my dogs nutro. both hannibal and alice's stools were never solid on nutro. If your dogs stools are good looking it's the best indicator of how the food is working through them I think just like people. I hope this helps and good luck.

LadyDG · Puppy Joined: 24 Jul 2008 Posts: 2

Actually my weim dante whos almost 1 i had to change his food 4 times, i myself having gone organic and holistic probaly the same reason i have my dog going that route, the recalls in both human and animal food lately. While when i got him he was on Dad's puppy chow (aka crappy sams club diet) i decided he needed to change. We tried science diet, then chicken soup for the dog lovers soul and finally we are on taste of the wild. While his body seems to agree with this one, i rotate food but not just dog food. I also have him on the "wolf down diet" which is organic veggies and meats rotated with dog food. I like taste of the wild seeing as theres no soy, grains or by-products. Believe it or not, my dog cant handle grains, so if he gets anything its pasta in his wolf-down diet. I would suggest anyone who is too afraid of keeping them to one diet, in all reality i dont trust a dog food that much to allow my dog to rely on it. Then again i am used to making my own food, why shouldnt i do the same for my animals? Wink

harpbonefran · Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2008 11:27 pm Post subject:

My Gracie does really well on Blue Buffalo Wilderness and I truly like the company and their business philosophy. You can check it out at www.bluebuff.com

I have also found these sites very helpful:

http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/dog_food_reviews/

http://www.dogaware.com/dogfeeding.html#commercial