Should I Switch In-Laws' Dogs' Food?

ORIGINAL: jenhuedepohl

Canidae Platinum might be a good choice, too.

That's what I was thinking.  It's inexpensive so it MIL wants to buy it later she can.  But you'll probably need to add some canned for the Shih Tzu to eat it as it is not very tasty.  Make sure you take away some of the dry food you add to account for the canned.

Nutro Natural Choice is expensive.

Chicken Soup Senior is also an inexpensive good food.  It usually doesn't need stuff added to it to make a dog eat it either.

I feed Zoe NB Sweet Potato and Fish,, approx 1 cup/day, free feed and she is 12.1lbs.  4 ozs less than last year.  I don't give her any other treats of snacks.  Its not a problem for her wieght at all!

ORIGINAL: jojo the pogo

If you could, maybe feed them Chicken Soup, or Canidae, or Diamond Lamb or Chicken and Rice.  All of those foods are actually the same price or less expensive than Beneful and much, much healthier.  Heck, if they are the type not to make the extra trip to a pet specialty store, buy Purina One.  It's not as good as the above mentioned but it is better than Beneful and about the same price.

Explain it to your in laws from this point of view - "You could feed better for less."  I would take it as being helpful, if I was your mother in law, rather than intrusive.

I totally agree. The idea is to point them towards foods that are the same cost or less then Beneful, but healthier. I think it would be a big mistake to try and get them to feed a food like EVO. It's way to expensive for them to consider and then they'll just scoff at the whole idea and think of how ridiculous it is to feed a dog food that costs so much. [8|]

I don't give her any other treats of snacks.

Can i ask why? [sm=happy.gif]

ORIGINAL: Edie

I don't give her any other treats of snacks.

Can i ask why? [sm=happy.gif]

 
Probably cause the dog has sensitivities that she doesn't want to screw up. 

For less than the price of Beneful,  they could feed Nutro Max, Iams, or CANIDAE. I think the choice would be easy- Canidae. (Not calculating price by cost/pound of food, but cost to feed a set # of calories)
But to make it easy on yourself, Nutro Max is the same price for the same weight bag- and even though it's no EVO, it is better than the current food and not super high in calories.

I agree that Canidae is probably the best choice in its price range, IF its easy to find where you live.  For many people, Nutro or Iams or Purina One is much easier to get, and that can be just as important as the cost. Most people don't want to go out of their way to get a certain brand of dog food.

I think she was saying EVO canned? Which is basically meat.

This is a moot point now but I was going to mention that Beneful is not what I'd call cheap so in the same budget you have lots of good options. Canidae Platinum rocks. Cal Natural is fantastic to take weight off. So is Solid Gold Holistique. And with the Holistique you can reduce the serving and add a little fresh meat (the calcium is balanced to allow up to 25% of additional fresh meat, um, or is it 75% - it's on the bag, or used to be), for the lab with the itchy skin.

Natural Balance is good - the allergy formulas are not too crazy concentrated. I have to add fresh meat and fat to Ben's food, in fact - he's on the Duck and potato (which I actuallly call Potato and Duck, which is what it really is, but I don't care since Ben can actually eat it!!!). These can be a bit more pricey but I think you'll find that for sure the Lab is going to need much less of the food than on the Beneful.

What I don't like about Beneful is a) it's expensive for what it is (may as well feed livestock feed store brand for $10 for 50 pounds), b) it's false advertising in the worst sense, and c) it really is nasty bad for dogs - there's so little meat protein that it really isn't surprising how few dogs do well on it. It's one of the few foods that I'll say, "You really CAN do better."