Our dog gets the runs if he eats beef. He gets constipated when he eats almost anything else.
But over time we’ve found food he eats willingly and stays healthy on, without messes or constipation:
Iams proactive dry food (about a cup), plus about a tablespoon of fancy feast seafood canned cat food, plus 2-3 heaping teaspoons of canned pumpkins, in a half cup or so of salt free chicken broth.
IAMS lamb and rice for the recently departed mutt. Pretty easy to read the ingredients and see which are crap and which are decent. We preferred a food we could buy at our supermarket - w/o making a separate trip.
Getting a new pup this Friday - got a bag of what the breeder started him on, will have to make a decision soon.
I don’t think it is lack of grain per se, I think it is lack of taurine or something. But it is quite real.
Instead of x cups of food, we do weighed amounts of Canidae all ages for the youngish, hairy dogs and Canidae less active for the older short hairs who stay inside during the more extreme weather. Mix ins of whatever left over meat we may have. Occasional Kirkland canned food mixed in. The Beagle is at his best weight in years now that we weigh his dry food instead of eyeballing it.
Tractor Supply’s 4Health Salmon & Potato. Too much corn makes my older Lab’s ears get gross and itchy, and the picky terrierish will eat it more or less willingly. The Lab puppy will eat anything that stands still long enough, so she’s on it too.
Our daughter’s dog, who we’re currently dog sitting, gets that one or Blue Wilderness. 55# APBT. Our daughter gives her other supplements, topical spray for skin, etc. The dog looks terrific, shiny eyes and fur, slim and muscular. Obviously it’s partly the dog, but while she had the same bright personality in the shelter her coat and eyes were dull.
This one is a picky eater though, we usually have to crumble a treat into the food or sprinkle a little oil from a tuna can to get her to eat a cup twice a day, otherwise she falls behind on eating and loses weight. Our previous ‘pit bull’ type would run into her room at full speed if the food was waiting for her after a walk, skid and crash into the wall behind her bowl, then finish it in around 20 seconds.
When the pack increased to six dogs, I started looking for something high quality but budget friendly. I had been feeding President’s Choice Grain Free Salmon and Potato, which was a bargain when I started feeding it a few years ago, but has slowly gone up in price until it’s comparable to most other premium foods. It did have the advantage of being something I could get from the grocery store, meaning one less stop.
I ended up ordering a skid of Inukshuk. Even with delivery to my home in the middle of nowhere, it worked out to under $60 all in for a 15 kg bag. It’s a decent quality food and costs about half as much per kg as the PC food. Coats are shiny, eyes are bright, no one lost weight and the convenience of not running to the store for dog food every week is a bonus. Plus Canadian made.
Our dogs do very well on Merrick Backcountry Big Game Recipe with Lamb, Wild Boar, and Venison.
Pedigree in the 50-lb bag.
Supplemented with whatever I’m eating that isn’t immediately dangerous to dogs or too salty.
I started out feeding our 2 dogs “premium” food. It got to be too expensive. Luca is 115# and Romeo is 85# - so that’s a total of about 6-7 cups per day. I’ve tried a few different foods and have now settled on Purina One Smart Blend True Instinct. I buy either the Turkey & Venison or Salmon & Tuna. Amazon delivers a 36# bag every month for $40. The dogs love it and there have been no health issues. In fact, Romeo, who has always had “soft-serve” poop now has normal poop (sorry TMI). I used to be on the grain-free bandwagon, but as Ulfrieda said, dogs are not wolves. They evolved to eat pretty much anything.
I always think back to days of yore when dogs hadn’t yet evolved into the family members they are now - they were considered pets. There wasn’t any premium food back then. Alpo was considered fancy. When I was a kid, our family dog was fed 1 can of Vet’s dog food every evening and some leftovers if there were any. He lived to the ripe old age of 16 and never had a health problem - he died in his sleep. No one inspected his poop for consistency, we had no idea onions were bad for dogs (I’m sure he ate many onions that were in leftovers), his coat and skin were probably just fine - no one inspected it for dandruff, he was never overweight, and he had the energy of a puppy until slowing down the last year of his life. Not that I would go back to those days - I love treating my dogs as members of the family, but I think in some ways things have gone over the top.
I used to belong to a boxer message board. OMG! Look out if you ever dared mention you weren’t serving your dog the most expensive, premium brand dog food available.
some people are convinced high price=high quality. High priced stuff is probably better than Purina but maybe not as good as people think.
Pluto, whose 41 pounds are weighing down my lap at the moment, gets Purina Pro Plan mixed with Iams canned food - either the “pate” or beef chunks, which were what the breeder had her pups on.
All our previous dogs have done fine on dry food, so it’s likely Pluto will transition to 100% Purina at some point.
Science Diet Small Bites, for dogs 1-6. It’s probably time to switch to a senior variety.
I buy a pricey food for two reasons. First, because my dogs look fabulous. Second, it helps me keep their weight right where it should be. I can’t afford to over-feed.
Cranky dog is a roughly 60-lb 8-year-old black Lab mutt. Daily, he gets two cups of Costco’s Kirkland Natures Domain Turkey & Sweet Potato, about three tablespoons of wet food from Costco, probably about an ounce of chicken jerky plus a bit more kibble as treats when he’s on walks or around the house. We also feed him a little table food when we’re eating stuff that won’t poison a dog, so he probably gets about 10% of his calories from cheese, roast chicken, yogurt, eggs, bread, peanut butter, pizza crust, etc. I probably get 10% of my calories from junk food too and I’m fairly healthy.
The vet says he’s in the prime of his life, in perfect health, and a healthy weight. I’ll admit, I’m a little concerned about that FDA report on grain free foods though. Maybe we’ll switch.
Jeez, I feel like such a cheapskate. We feed ours Kibbles and Bits. Plus they get plenty of table scraps.
I forgot to mention, mine also get along with their dry food a small scoop of wet food. Right now its Beneful Chopped Blends. I swear it looks like a nice stew that I could eat!
They also get plenty of treats, both dog and human handouts which include but are not limited to pizza crusts, sandwich crusts, eggs, bits of meat - basically whatever we eat they get some of it whether it’s an actual leftover or if they’re just drooling in front of us as we eat. Romeo stands under the table and rests his head in my lap just in case I drop something.
The! Absolutely! Best! Most Divine Eats Imaginable! At least, according to them. I keep meaning to taste it.
Actually it’s whatever is cheapest that week at Tractor Supply.
I’m a little jealous. When we pick up horse feed at Tractor Supply I look at the dog food. I could buy 100 pounds of their stuff for about what I pay for 40 pounds of our dogs food.