Best dog food brand?

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Depends on where you'll buy, but if it's from a retail store like PetSmart I recommend Innova and Wellness. I started feeding my puppy Wellness because it was at a slightly lower price and you can definitely notice the difference. She has a lot more energy now, she gets a full stomach easier (you feed them less because it has more nutrients, so you're actually saving money), and her turds aren't as smelly now.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

I wouldn't take what those websites (dogfoodadvisor, dogfoodanalysis, etc..) have to say as any kind of bible. I tried all kinds of "4/5 star" dog food listed on those sites and almost all of them gave both my dogs digestive issues.

They have so many weird ingredients in them that I don't think dogs are used to eating. The authors have a hard on for grain-free foods and talk about what dogs would eat in the wild. News flash: Dogs haven't been wild for thousands of years, they aren't wolves, and don't need the same food as wolves. The authors have no qualifications to be rating dog foods whatsoever either.

I don't think your food choice is going to greatly affect your dogs teeth either. If you're concerned about his teeth you should just brush them (or get toys that are meant to clean teeth)

LOL, sure.

You clearly don't understand the science behind this.

 

[bignateyk]

LOL, sure.

You clearly don't understand the science behind this.

I don't think you do. What makes those people qualified to rate dog food? All I'm saying is just because one of those sites say a food is great doesn't mean it is. I'm sure some of them are good, but from my experience, some of them are worse.

 

[ShawnD1]

LOL, sure.

You clearly don't understand the science behind this.

He might be serious about the digestive issues thing. My friend had a really fucked up purebred (inbred) basset hound and it couldn't eat lots of the normal food. He needed some kind of special organic from the earth goodness expensive food.

Dogs are just like humans. Some of them can eat normal food and it's all good. Some of them are inbred for the past 30 generations and that's why they have diarrhea when they drink milk or die when they touch peanuts. Yes I'm talking about you, kid who sat next to me in grade 5.

 

[alkemyst]

I refuse to believe this. Fat people always tell me that they don't lose weight even when they eat less


Dogs are probably like humans. Switch their food on a regular basis. I wouldn't want to eat chicken with fried rice every single day for the rest of my life.

You need activity too. Dogs tend to get less active with a poor quality food.

With a premium food you can feed less. You still need to follow the instructions on the label to get the portions.

Switching dog food on a regular basis goes against all proper diet knowledge. Go fucking troll another thread.

 

[bignateyk]

You need activity too. Dogs tend to get less active with a poor quality food.

With a premium food you can feed less. You still need to follow the instructions on the label to get the portions.

Switching dog food on a regular basis goes against all proper diet knowledge. Go fucking troll another thread.

Yeah.. my dogs would be shitting their brains out if I switched their food on a regular basis. Once I find one that works for them I stick with it.

 

[Zeze]

I don't think you do. What makes those people qualified to rate dog food? All I'm saying is just because one of those sites say a food is great doesn't mean it is. I'm sure some of them are good, but from my experience, some of them are worse.

Uhhh.. they're not just pulling crap out of their ass.

What the raters are doing is nothing more than tracking what exactly each ingredients mean per FDA regulation and accurately interpreting them.

For example, ingredients are listed by weight. So you know if it says, "Chicken, Brown Rice, White Rice..." Then you know chicken is the biggest ingredient. More importantly, the dog food company is being sneaky as the combined makeup of two rices are greater than 'chicken' and therefore the #1 ingredient.

There are MANY ingredients that should be a red flag, most of them plague major supermarket brands (Purina, Beneful, Science Diet, Pedigree, etc):

-Corn (shitty filler, usually #1 ingredient in major brands)

-Animal (Chicken, Pork, Beef) By-Product (FDA-classified as leftover carcass giblets, gizzards, and bones all ground up into a meal)

-Gluten Meal (pure leftover grain shells devoid of any nutrients)

List goes on.

What they're doing is not rocket science. You can read them and 'get it' in few minutes. They're not doing some secret shit. Look at the ingredients of Beneful vs Taste of the Wild (both actually similar in price too).

Beneful
Ingredients:
Ground yellow corn, chicken-by-product meal, corn gluten meal, whole wheat flour, beef tallow preserved with mixed-tocopherols (source of Vitamin E), rice flour, beef, soy flour, Minerals (tricalcium phosphate, salt, potassium chloride, dicalcium phosphate, calcium carbonate, zinc sulfate, ferrous sulfate, manganese sulfate, copper sulfate, calcium iodate, sodium selenite), sugar, sorbitol, water, animal digest, phosphoric acid, sorbic acid (a preservative), L-Lysine monohydrochloride, dried peas, etc...

Taste of the Wild
Ingredients:
Duck, duck meal, chicken meal, egg product, sweet potatoes, peas, chicken fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols), potatoes, roasted quail, roasted duck, smoked turkey, natural flavor, tomato pomace, ocean fish meal, salt, choline chloride, dried chicory root, tomatoes, blueberries, raspberries, Yucca schidigera extract, dried fermentation products of Enterococcus faecium, etc..

Just look at it. You can tell Beneful is pure pile of dog shit.

If YOUR dog is having problems regardless of good or shitty kibble, then obviously problem lies outside of (!gasp) kibble.

 

[bignateyk]

Again, they aren't in any way qualified to grade dog food. I go by results. My dogs do better on some of the "3 star" foods than most of the "4/5" star foods I tried. You can't take those websites as a bible. Just because they say a food is great doesn't mean its gonna work for your dog. Every dog is different.

 

[onza]

I feed my dog a mixture of 80%/20% respectively with http://www.avodermnatural.com/Dog_Foods/adult_lr.htm + http://www.petco.com/product/7954/Natural-Balance-Ultra-Premium-Dog-Food.aspx

Avoderm + Natural Balance

I don't think one "brand" or "type" is good enough when feeding your dog because of the variety of nutrients each brands have. It's best to mix bags.

 

[Zeze]

Again, they aren't in any way qualified to grade dog food. I go by results. My dogs do better on some of the "3 star" foods than most of the "4/5" star foods I tried. You can't take those websites as a bible. Just because they say a food is great doesn't mean its gonna work for your dog. Every dog is different.

You missed the point of my thread. No, they're not doing any magical shit, I'm AGREEING with you.

I'm also telling you that you can LOOK at the ingredients YOURSELF and find what each definitions actually mean and judge the quality of kibble.

All the ingredients can be ranked by quality (thanks to FDA on these shitty companies), then you can rank each kibble in its entirety.

If your dog is allergic to wheat which happens to be in a specific 5-star brand versus a 3-star food which doesn't, does it make the 5-star a worse food? No.

Just because your dog react different individually to it, that doesn't throw out the whole legitimacy of kibble out the window. Jesus Christ.

 

[ViviTheMage]

My dog loves wellness :

http://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/dog-food-reviews/wellness-dog-food-super-5-mix-dry/

I've got a lot of compliments about her coat. My dog has sustained her weight for the last 3 years as well...everytime we weigh her, she is 48.3lbs, the vet loves it.

We have tried a lot of the 3/5 stuff, and 5/5 stuff .... she never liked it, she always liked the wellness stuff.

 

[Zeze]

I feed my dog a mixture of 80%/20% respectively with http://www.avodermnatural.com/Dog_Foods/adult_lr.htm + http://www.petco.com/product/7954/Natural-Balance-Ultra-Premium-Dog-Food.aspx

Avoderm + Natural Balance

I don't think one "brand" or "type" is good enough when feeding your dog because of the variety of nutrients each brands have. It's best to mix bags.

My dog started with Avoderm, then I switched because it has way too much rice (brown rice + white rice). Coincidentally, that 'deception' of Avoderm was in my previous post as example.

I switched him to Wellness Super5mix for same cost at same store (PetCo). He eventually switched to Taste of the Wild- only $3~ more and far better ingredients.

 

[alkemyst]

I don't think you do. What makes those people qualified to rate dog food? All I'm saying is just because one of those sites say a food is great doesn't mean it is. I'm sure some of them are good, but from my experience, some of them are worse.

It'd be pretty well attacked by professionals if they were providing misinformation.

It's not rocket science here. A dog, person, etc needs a certain macro/micro nutrient profile. The food that matches that the best is the best. Anything more is bad and anything less bad. Much of the time the excess isn't as bad as a deficiency.

When your dog food has Corn, Rice as the first two ingredients and meat doesn't show up until item 5, there is a good chance your dog food would be like eating Captain Crunch as your only meal.

It would help your argument/debate if you could qualify where you think they are wrong.

 

[HydroSqueegee]

does the vet get it free from reps?

doubt it just for the fact thats a shitload of free food to get from one comapny. my wife does all the ordering, inventory and talks with all the reps.

 

[alkemyst]

I feed my dog a mixture of 80%/20% respectively with http://www.avodermnatural.com/Dog_Foods/adult_lr.htm + http://www.petco.com/product/7954/Natural-Balance-Ultra-Premium-Dog-Food.aspx

Avoderm + Natural Balance

I don't think one "brand" or "type" is good enough when feeding your dog because of the variety of nutrients each brands have. It's best to mix bags.

While mixing foods can give a more complete nutritional level, a good dog food will be complete by itself.

However, this is why people can survive so well on crappy diets. They change foods enough that they never really get a deficiency in anything (esp now with half our products pumped full of vitamins and minerals).

 

[bignateyk]

It'd be pretty well attacked by professionals if they were providing misinformation.

It's not rocket science here. A dog, person, etc needs a certain macro/micro nutrient profile. The food that matches that the best is the best. Anything more is bad and anything less bad. Much of the time the excess isn't as bad as a deficiency.

When your dog food has Corn, Rice as the first two ingredients and meat doesn't show up until item 5, there is a good chance your dog food would be like eating Captain Crunch as your only meal.

It would help your argument/debate if you could qualify where you think they are wrong.

I know several vets who warn against using grain-free dog foods, which tend to have a much higher protein content. Other than that I don't think they're "wrong" per se. Just that every dog is different, and some dogs, like my own, don't do well on most of the 4/5 star dog foods.

 

[Zeze]

I know several vets who warn against using grain-free dog foods, which tend to have a much higher protein content. Other than that I don't think they're "wrong" per se. Just that every dog is different, and some dogs, like my own, don't do well on most of the 4/5 star dog foods.

Yes and my point stands.

 

[ShawnD1]

Yeah.. my dogs would be shitting their brains out if I switched their food on a regular basis. Once I find one that works for them I stick with it.

Your dogs are inbred. My neighbor's dog eats all kind of random garbage and he never gets sick. He eats dog food, human food, not food (grass), and he chews fallen tree branches.

 

[alkemyst]

I know several vets who warn against using grain-free dog foods, which tend to have a much higher protein content. Other than that I don't think they're "wrong" per se. Just that every dog is different, and some dogs, like my own, don't do well on most of the 4/5 star dog foods.

I don't think you understand what you are hearing...I don't know your test cases that can prove sub-par foods have your dogs doing better than 4/5 star foods.

grain-free or not, high protein can be bad for any dog (or human). You need to qualify the basis for the diet more.

My diabetic dog would do poorly on a lot of carbohydrates so a higher protein food is beneficial for her.

My cattle dog gets a high level of activity, likewise he can benefit from a more nutrient dense food.

High protein diets can be bad for large and giant sized dogs as puppies as they can cause too much growth too fast.

What foods did you compare? I find it interesting as I almost know no one that truly swapped foods in any kind of major quantity nor feed them long enough to tell any health differences.

 

[ViviTheMage]

Your dogs are inbred. My neighbor's dog eats all kind of random garbage and he never gets sick. He eats dog food, human food, not food (grass), and he chews fallen tree branches.

I guarantee you he had the runs once in his life...he had to get accustomed to that diet somehow.

 

[alkemyst]

Your dogs are inbred. My neighbor's dog eats all kind of random garbage and he never gets sick. He eats dog food, human food, not food (grass), and he chews fallen tree branches.

You don't understand breeding, nor does one dog set the stage for all others.

I don't see it believable that you know so much about a neighbor's dog's diet nor true health.

People can seem to be doing pretty good on a poor diet, but their blood work shows a major disagreement...this is all fine at the time; the damage shows up in later years.

 

[alkemyst]

doubt it just for the fact thats a shitload of free food to get from one comapny. my wife does all the ordering, inventory and talks with all the reps.

Unfortunately, most vets don't take any true nutritional classes in Vet school. The ones they usually do get are sponsered by one of the big food companies.

The vet's tend to go with what they learned about.

 

[ShawnD1]

I guarantee you he had the runs once in his life...he had to get accustomed to that diet somehow.

He wouldn't get sick if he were fed good food on a regular basis.
It's just like humans. If you get sick from Indian food, that means your body is garbage and you need to see a doctor. If Mexican food gives you diarrhea, it's because your body is horribly broken. If lactose makes you sick, you probably have HIV.

As long as the dog or human has a well rounded diet, normal food will not make him sick.

 

[alkemyst]

He wouldn't get sick if he were fed good food on a regular basis.
It's just like humans. If you get sick from Indian food, that means your body is garbage and you need to see a doctor. If Mexican food gives you diarrhea, it's because your body is horribly broken. If lactose makes you sick, you probably have HIV.

As long as the dog or human has a well rounded diet, normal food will not make him sick.

wow, food allergies = HIV?

humans can eat chocolate and grapes/raisins all day...on your logic they would be fine for any dog that wasn't 'inbred'. In reality, they will make dogs sick to dead.

 

[bignateyk]

What foods did you compare? I find it interesting as I almost know no one that truly swapped foods in any kind of major quantity nor feed them long enough to tell any health differences.

In the last two years I have tried:
As far as the "4/5" star foods:
Before Grain Buffalo
Natures Logic
Taste of the Wild Prairie
Taste of the Wild Pacific Stream
Barking at the Moon

As far as "lower quality" foods go:
Royal Canin
Purina Pro Plan (two different kinds)


I stuck with each food for about 3 months to give the dogs a chance to get used to them. So far the only food that both of my dogs have solid stool on is the Purina Pro Plan.

Natures Logic was the worst. It gave both my dogs chronic diahrrea.

After about 3 months on the Pro Plan, both of them have had consistently solid stool, neither one scratches frequently, and both are high energy with good coats.

Moral of the story: Just because some website says a food sucks doesn't actually mean it does. I was a firm believer in those websites, which is why I tried all those 4/5 star foods to try to give my dogs a better nutrition.