My dogs eat a local brand dry food around $2 a pound. They are in good health aged around 7. There are many choices that are 3 or 4 bucks a pound. Is the extra money worth it? Foods like Canidae , Orijen, Acana , etc
I did a lot of reading on this back in the day when I had a dog, and never came up with anything conclusive. Just about every recommendation and criticism had a diametric opposite somewhere else. Ironically, “Science Diet”, which makes both general-purpose dog foods and specialty foods prescribed by vets, is often among the most maligned by self-styled “experts”.
My own solution was the same as that of other dog lovers I knew. I used a base of kibble (usually Science Diet) but always supplemented it with a generous amount of real food, like beef stew, grilled beef or chicken, and the like. My vet suggested that chicken was a good frequent choice because it was easy to digest. Foods with lots of juices or gravy that soaked into the kibble always worked well. This approach not only gives your dog the nourishment of real fresh food, but also gives him variety from day to day.
ETA: The purpose of the kibble was not just to provide extra bulk and calories, but also the maintain the dog’s teeth in good health.
Our previous dog, a 40 Lb mix breed, died of cancer when he was 11 years old. That’s young for a 40 lb. dog, but not outside expected life expectancy.
The thing is, my wife did a lot of research on dog food and 90% of the food that dog ate was Orijen. Other foods, she said, were described as “cancer in a bag.” Now, I don’t believe the food had anything to do with the dog’s condition. I had a 70 Lb. dog prior to our marriage who ate nothing but Ol’ Roy (Sam’s Club discount brand) who lived to 14 before succumbing to an intestinal twist. I don’t believe that dog’s demise had anything to do with it’s diet, either.
One of the things my wife (the one who has done the research) stresses is that most of what the vet’s have learned about canine nutrition comes from the companies selling dog food (Science Diet, for example), so they only are repeating what they have been taught. Of course, it is also true that these companies have published most of the research into canine nutrition, so I don’t see anything untoward with that.
The truth is, dogs are a gift, and if you get more than 10 years out of one, you are lucky (frankly, if you have a dog, you are lucky). In my opinion, if you feed it high-priced food, you might feel better, but it isn’t going to make much difference to the dog. The knowledge of canine nutrition requirements is much better today than it was 40 years ago, and those dogs did just fine. Now, there have been some issues of foreign-based manufacturers, so you might want to pay attention to where the stuff is coming from, but if the dog likes it, what more can you do?
I dunno, man. I feed my crew cheap-ass Kroger dog food, or whatever has a hole in the bag in the half-price bin. They get lots of fresh air and excercise, not overfed or fat. Vet says they are the best looking Dachshunds he’s seen.
Ya know? They eat cat and horse shit when you aren’t watching them. Field mice, dead rabbits and lizards (but they don’t seem to like lizards very much) Stale pretzels and Tostitos. Just keep them active and happy, and I think nature takes care of them.
My elder dog is 75 lbs and 14 years old, still hale and hearty aside from dodgy eyesight, slight tendency to deafness and he’s a little stiff and creaky. Given that he’s the dog analogue of a ninety year old, I’m pretty impressed. I feed my guys Kirkland chicken based adult dog food, supplemented with a bit of canned food and a spoon of mixed meat mess (1 kilo of ground meat–cheap hamburger, ground turkey, pork or chicken with four eggs fried hard in the grease, then the grease gets poured off) that also gets shared with the cats, who get a bit of the meat mess along with their canned food. I supplement the dogs with a gram of taurine powder per meal, a fish oil capsule and Bear the old man also gets Cosequin tabs and a squirt of CBD oil in his food. Helps with the old dog arthritis stiffness. My friends swear my dogs eat better than most humans and they’re probably correct about that.
I used to feed Blue Buffalo, but it literally costs twice what the Kirkland stuff runs and has had a miserable track record for recalls and spoilage. I’ll stick with the Costco stuff, thanks.
I had a golden retriever who lived to 12, died from cancer. She ate Canidae dog food which at the time was $65 for 50# I believe. I’m pretty sure her cancer was genetic. She never really had any health problems.
My new dogs are both mutts and they both eat Canidae, which is now $75 for 44#. They’re about 8 or 9 years old. No health problems in either of them so far, except the girl gets a regular shot due to itchy skin. We didn’t try finding what she may be allergic to in her food, as the allergy shots she gets work great.
I didn’t do too much research about what food to feed them. I knew I didn’t want to get grocery store stuff but I also didn’t want the highest end. Canidae seemed like a good mid-level and the dogs think it’s tasty.
Even though the food I get now is pretty pricey I’m loath to change it. Don’t want to mess with what we’ve got going on here. And $75 a month to feed two dogs isn’t too crazy. It’s about 1/3 of what it costs per month to feed one me. Although my girl eats her own poop on the regular, and sometimes it offends me that I’m paying for this good food! Then again maybe the delicious poop is a testament to how much she likes her food…
I just recall from 15 years ago, the FDA 2007 recall of 50-some brands of dog food, containing a contaminated ingredient from China that was used to fake a ‘gravy’ on the canned food. Turned out that all these dozens of brand names used additives from a single company in Ontario, which got their supply from 2 factories in China.
What I remember from back then was that the recall included so many of the ‘premium’ brands of dog food, but not the basic house brands from Wal-Mart, CostCo, etc.
That pretty much made me decide that:
- ‘premium’ dog food wasn’t worth the extra cost, and
- there wasn’t much difference from one brand to the next.
In 15 years since then, I haven’t seen any reason to change those conclusions.
All I know is, don’t ask the dogs. You know what they will opt for.
“Premium”, “high-end”, and similar buzzwords are just marketing speak. Or are they regulated?
Think of it this way: would you eat it if you had to? That is what you should be considering.
I know a place where you can buy boxes of frozen (not dry) dog food cooked from actual meat, fruits, and vegetables. The price per pound is the same 3 or 4 bucks but keep in mind it has not been dried (it’s not hard at all to find stupid-high prices for freeze-dried food at the pet store).
I have fed Merrick dry dog food for a long time. All I know is that my dogs look great and they all finish each meal. I have no plans on changing.
Three dogs have made it to 14 on Tractor Supply’s Retriever Hi-Protein food – about $25/50 lbs. The dogs like it, neighbor dogs show up for meals because they seem to prefer this to whatever their owners are feeding, and if the dogs are inside all day, they are much less likely to mess in the house on this brand than others. It maybe should be noted that they regularly supplement their diet with deer droppings, grass, and whatever disgusting finds they come across, so maybe not all the credit goes to the dogfood.
I feed my five dogs Canidae. They range in age from 7 to 15 and are in good condition, except the 14 year old Husky mix has short legs, so he also needs carprofen each day.
They also get what we call “mix ins” with each meal. Anything in the fridge that is okay for them to eat, some canned pumpkin, green beans, whatever will add a variety.
Here are my husky mix and rat terrier.
https://ibb.co/92F6FpM
I do that as well, but on weekends I’ll step it up and throw an extra burger/steak/chicken breast on the grill and the dogs get that.
I wish I could feed myself and my husband on $75 a month!
Back when we had dogs, we fed what was recommended by the people we got them from, and that worked fine until we adopted one that turned out to have inflammatory bowel disease. Now I know more about dog food ingredients than I ever wanted to.
As already mentioned, there really isn’t a whole lot of research out there about pet food that doesn’t come from the companies that make them. I do have a book about cat and dog diets that was written by a vet, though, and used that to help my IBD dog.
Cheaper dog foods tend to require you to feed a larger quantity of food than the higher end ones. More input tends to lead to greater, um, output … so there is that, if it matters.
Just keep your dogs from getting fat and give them plenty of exercise. That’s at least as important as what you choose to feed if your dog is otherwise healthy.
I haven’t noticed dog poop mentioned. Generally, better quality food results in better quality poop. As in, healthier, smaller, more dense, moisture to solid ratio, easier to pick up. As opposed to large, dry, airy, crumbly.
Some foods may also contain a particular ingredient that doesn’t agree with the dog. I ran into this a couple dogs ago. My dog would have bouts of dry, flaky skin. Like dandruff. I had been alternating between 2 food brands and eventually figured out that when I switched to brand ‘B’ the dry skin re-emerged. I can’t say there was anything wrong with the food, but there was apparently something in it that my dog was allergic to.
I rotate food brands occasionally but mostly feed Nutro. I guess that might be considered ‘medium range’ food. Either chicken base or lamb base & rice. Also a small amount of table scraps if it’s nothing too spicy. He’s had no serious health issues and is nearly 14. Has some arthritis now which he gets meds for (Meloxicam). Lab/Border Collie.
I agree with the general discussion in that you almost have to be a bloody scientist to buy dog (or any animal) food these days. I’m sure it’s 99% marketing B.S. Marketing/sales people might have done almost as much to destroy our planet as politicians.
My dogs split a whole can of no-salt green beans at dinner time, in lieu of more food. So they get food at 9 and 1, then after our walk they get just green beans. They friggin LOVE their beans!
The “mix-in” is exactly what I was referring to in my post #2 above. But I would do it every time, on the assumption that it added all-important meat protein to the kibble in addition to taste, nutrition, moisture, and just variety. Sort of like having rice every day, but always topped with a different meat and sauce.
I feed Canidae which is a middle-high price kibble. My two dogs who died last year were 14.5 and 19.5 years, respectively; both were Australian Shepherds, not toy breeds, which live the longest if something doesn’t squash them.
The thing to look at in dog kibble is not the price but the label. The first two ingredients should be some kind of meat identified by species. Not “meat meal” or “meat byproducts”. Those, legally, can be ground up feathers and cartilage. You don’t want corn in the first five ingredients either. Not because it is toxic or some such nonsense, but because it is poor-quality filler. Cheap grocery-store brands are mostly meat byproducts, soybeans, and corn. Midrange brands will have better quality proteins and carbs. It’s the super-premiums that have crap in them like roast duck and smoked herring and sweet potatoes.
As was said, dogs eat offal, feces, and carrion and are none the worse. They aren’t exactly gourmets. I had a corgi who ate five pounds of flour once. Who was fine (his poops were like dirty chalk for awhile).
There’s a ton of gimmickry and fads in dog food, and not much oversight. The latest is “grain-free”. Crock o’ baloney, that is.
The grain free thing has some hidden downsides–one of my dogs participated in a study of grain free diets and dilated cardiomyopathy (was supposed to be two of them but nobody could get Bear to be still for the ECG since I couldn’t be in the building due to COVID restrictions) and it appears that the ingredient of choice that gets used in a grain free food is often chickpeas, peas or other legumes and yes, these have been linked to heart problems in dogs. This is why I supplement with taurine, the dog who did get the ECG had a slight tendency for her heart not to pump out as high a volume as they’d have expected from a young dog with her activity level, so the vet in charge of the study suggested I add taurine to counteract possible damage. This was when I switched them over to the Kirkland Adult Chicken formula, which does not use legumes–they had previously been on the salmon formula, that did rely on chickpeas in the recipe.
Our american bulldog-shelter-street dog-mutt ate a couple pounds of my son’s paintball ammo soon after we adopted her. So much that her belly was distended to the point of a pregnant mom. She spent the day alternately guzzling water and pooping (nothing high velocity).
We used to feed her and another dog Iams, but it gave them dry skin or maybe an allergic reaction. We use Purina ProPlan now supplemented with a few spoons of canned, gravy-rich Purina Dog Chow High Protien.
CW