So Lets Talk about Canned Food

 I don't feed canned, exclusively, BUT a LOT of grain frees are available!

Mine get Tripette, Happy Hips (by dogswell), Merrick, EVO, Natural Balance allergy formulas, Solid Gold Green Cow, and probably a ton more I'm not thinking of. ALL of those are grain free (or you can pick the grain free varieties). Emma doesn't get all of that, but between them, LOL. Right now, we're on a big tripe kick. They always look great, when they get some tripe.

My two get the Natural Balance LID cans. Tiki will ONLY eat the duck and potato, but Pirate doesn't mind any of them. I haven't been able to find the venison and sweet potato, apparently there is a supply problem? They both look good but neither have a particular problem with allergies.

I WISH I had more of a selection around here, but all I've got to work with is Petco/PetSmart/Pet Supermarket, so my choices are limited :(

The Wellness line is OK but I think it has barley, or something. I just know Pirate can't have it! I did notice that there was something new called Wellness Simple Solution, but it had rice. Nature's Variety has Instinct canned that I LOVED and Pirate did really well on, but no one sells it within a 50 mile radius.

Also, (and I know you didn't ask this) but at least for my dogs, the recommended feeding amounts on the can were RIDICULOUS. They said my 15 lb-ers would need 1+ can per day, each. They would EXPLODE! They get 1/4 can each, twice a day, plus 1/3 c. of kibble, and maintain their weights. Neither is very active though.

Jennie, which Merrick cans are grain-free? I noticed them in Pet Supermarket but I had my hands full and didn't want to stop to read the labels.

 A BUNCH! The thanksgiving day dinner, venison holiday stew, brauts n tots, campfire trout feast, burger pie n sweety fries (which reminds me, Emma can still have that, no eggs!), fish n chips (has chicken), cowboy cookout, grammy's pot pie (chicken flavored), annd I think that's all.

 

So, yeah, Emma can't eat most of them, anymore, but a BUNCH are grain free, and low glycemic. 

If I had little dogs only I'd probably not even mess with home cooking and feed wonderful products like Ziwi Peak, Addiction, Tripett, and a bunch of others. Merrick is good and generally available but right now you want to stick with as simple as possible. Evo makes some great meat only choices that are pretty easy to find. I'd stick with beef, fish, and venison as safest. It's possible you've got allergies to those at work too, but you may as well minimize your risk. Something else you can do is even simpler. Go to the market and get some plantains, sweet potato, jicama, water chestnut, or some other exotic starch. Pick up some pork or game meat - rabbit or quail or bison if you ca find it (check the frozen case where they sell boxed steaks and sirloin patties, sometimes theY sell bison burgers there). You can even just do meat for that short amount of time. Be sure to supplement with fish oil though. Dogs with allergies need this desperately. Anyway, balance is totally of secondary importance when their little bodies are so out of sorts.

Thanks guys,

Right now they are on turkey and potato, Darby is MUCH improved and Lexi is still itchy but improving it seems. I have a hunch with ragweed being very high here, that it could largely be environmental but we'll see. 

I will look at ziwi peak.  I am thinking of feeding Gobie (minpin- does well on anything) a good kibble like innova or cal. natural or some such with a bit of canned, and once I know what the allergy issue is, feed canned or something to the girls.  Decisions decisions. I hate how I ride the food rollercoaster with them (largely self imposed LOL)

I just noticed Taste of the Wild has canned formulas available now! It's a possibility then, even better is that Tractor Supply carries their foods just down the road.  They also carry Blue Buffalo, Nutro, Diamond Naturals and other lower end stuff. THen there is a groom shop that has some of the Natura line. Trying to crunch the budget and get away from the cost of shipping. Eek.

I just checked the cost of ziwi peak.  Even with small dogs, that is WAY out of my price range unfortunately. I'm sure i'll come up with soemting else.

Yeah, I just can't bring myself to spend more than $2/can. K9 Cuisine has free shipping over $50, and I've been browsing their website tonight.

I can spend hours looking over k9cuisine.com as well. I htink I'd be able to come up with enough food and goodies to get the free shipping. I really like that!

It is pretty easy to feed a small dog canned only. Ginger ate only canned for well over a year (due to her megaesophagus), and then one day she decided she wanted kibble again. For her, kibble has been a good thing, as she never seemed full on canned food. She's the only dog I've met that had that issue though.

And a bit off topic, I didn't know TOTW had a canned food now. I'll have to pick some up as toppers.

 

I feed California Natural salmon and sweet potato.  I like canned foods because they are more often truly grain free, and have fewer preservatives,  (I think grain is a problem for one of my dogs.)  I hate the cost (almost $2 a can) but I've tried a number of kibbles and Joey just doesn't seem to do well on any of them. I usually buy from heartypet.com, especially when they send me an email giving me half price shipping or something like that.  They're very reasonable price-wise, and they ship lightening fast!  I highly recommend them.  For the past 2 or 3 weeks, I've fed about 1/4 homecooked fish and sweet potatoes, with a little bit of carrot and squash mixed in, thinking that I'd like to cut down on the cost of Joey's food.  If that continues to work out fine, I'll probably shift to 1/2 homecooked, after doing a little more research about what extras I need to add (calcium mostly, I think).  I like the idea of homecooked, both from a nutritional and cost standpoint, but I'm a little afraid right now of not getting the nutrition right.  I don't rotate - Joey seems to be sensitive to diet changes and I feel that does more harm than good.  My other dog doesn't have any allergies, so she gets Cal Nat kibble, usually fish.  .