Dog Food Poll

We started on Performatrin (Super Premium) and tried a variety in that line of products.

My lab-x did VERY well on Pro Plan.  My dobe didn't do well on Performatrin, Diamond, or Pro Plan.  I going to leave my lab on the Pro Plan when I switched the dobe to Canidae - but I really didn't want to bother with the two different foods.... He's actually doing better on the Canidae - but I didn't have any complaints with the Purina product.

My mom's beagle is doing excellent on Purina One. 

I think it depends on the dog.  I mean - our hounds growing up ate nothing but "Dog Chow" in the green bag....

I too fed purina. Little morsels and then stepped up to Beneful healthy radiance. LOL! Now I feed eagle Pack Holistic lamb and rice. They love it, but they scarfed the beneful down. Especially the red pieces.

The "worst" foods I've fed were to my first dog, my minpin who is now 10 (but acts/looks like a dog half his age). 
They were:  Iams, Authority (Petsmart brand), Bil-Jac dry (although I still like to rotate this and the frozen now and again).
 
I feed/have fed: Nutro, Nature's Variety, Chicken Soup, Innova, California Natural, PetGuard (love it!), Canidae, Royal Canine, Volhard Natural diet and the NDF, Sojo's, Know Better dog food, also homecooked by Strombeck and a meatloaf by my vet.
I'm sure there are others but these are the ones I remember off the top of my head.
 
My dogs do better on the less 'fancy' foods, ones w/out all the kitchen sink formulation.

Well Bubblegum has been on Eagle Pack since I got her (its a Dane thing) and was on Diamond before that. But my other two dogs were on grocery store food, but always the moist (not canned) kind like Gainsburgers (anyone remember them??) and Kibbles & Bits, Kennelration Plus, just any kind of food like that which I had a coupon for or was on sale. Sammy my pitbull lived to almost 16 yrs old on that cheap food  and was healthy the whole time. Cindy my Dane/Shepherd lived to almost 13 yrs old on BilJac frozen.   I would never feed those foods now (well, I would the BilJac frozen) but I'm not sure that the dogs could have been any healthier then they were with any other food.
 
(Sooner, I can't say that I would be trying other premium food if your dogs are not doing good on it, I would keep them healthy eating what was best for them if it were me)

My first ever dog wasd fed raw,and all the ones after him too. I remember picking up a bag of supermarket food when i was a teen and wretching at the ingredients,i vowed never to feed such crap to my dogs!

Now,my current dogs are the only ones i have ever fed dry food too,they are currently on innova small bites and EVO,with plenty of rmb's and whatever else fresh foods i can get down their fussy gullets!

Eevee once ate Alpo, Purina Fit & Trim, Beneful, Kibbles & Chunks (without my knowledge), and Natural Choice.
 
She was full of hair and dander on the first 4 lmao... And I was tearing my hair out trying to figure out why.

Oh gosh, let me think if I can remember all of them, lol. Spot came home with Purina Puppy Chow (I also fed Pedigree Puppy at times).

Spot's 8 years old now, here are the foods he's had in his lifetime (as an adult):

Purina (including: Alpo, Beneful, Dog Chow, ProPlan, ONE, Mainstay, Little Bites, Fit and Trim)
Pedigree Adult
Ol' Roy
Gravy Train
Kibbles N Bits
Bil-Jac
Nutro (Small Bites)
Brands I can't remember the name, but remember they were like $8 for 50 lbs
Canidae All Life Stages

Now on Canidae Platinum.

Once I tried resighting names of dog food brands to my dad and some how came up with like 30. My dad was like, "Gosh, when I was growing up all there was to choose from was Purina and Pedigree".

Link was on Purina Puppy Chow for the first week I had him. He went in to get his first round of shots, and was allergic to something, so he had diarrhea that night. The next day I went to the vets office and they sold me some Rx Purina cans. For some reason I started talking with my neighbor about food, and how he fed his german shepherd frozen Bil-Jac. I started to do a bunch of research, and before the cans of Rx Purina even ran out, Link was on Solid Gold Wolfcub.

The little mutt I got when we moved out of married student housing back in '75 ate Gainesburgers.  DS #2 decided on that for his first solid food - he just crawled over to the dog dish when he was about 10 mo. old and started eating.  It wasn't a complete nutritional bust, though.  It was Gainesburgers with cheese[]so it did have that little bit of extra protein.

I had no clue that the stuff in dog food wasn't great for dogs.  After all, it's DOG food, right?
 
My dad fed his dogs Purina, but Purina THEN was a darned site better than Purina NOW.  I never had a vet suggest anything other than SD and gosh, I simply couldn't justify the expense (thankfully) since I just didn't know any better.
 
Over the years my dogs ate Purina or Pedigree and tablescraps.  I never fed raw cuz I'd been told by vets to never feed raw...of course they also told me that table food...leftovers from our own meals and not crap, was bad for them, but why let good leftovers go to waste?
 
It wasn't until I came to idog that I started to really realize that the nutritional value in the Purina Large Breed puppy wasn't all that great and that Misty was likely exhibiting a FOOD ALLERGY.  No vet ever addressed her naked spot above her tail or her incessent chewing on it.  Even when I ASKED, all they would ever do is give her steroids.  I regret not knowing then what I know now, but I didn't know and refuse to beat myself up over history.  I can't change it.
 
My first change was to Royal Canin....after HOURS in the store reading labels......and it was the best available.  I almost crapped right there in the store at the price!  And honestly the wind was soooo taken out of my sails when I came back to idog and reported my find only to be told, it's a decent food, but not worth the price.  But, it was the best I could do locally and it WAS much better than what I was feeding before.  So, I started to homecook as well.  Once I got hold of my first bag of Innova there was no looking back.  I did try Chicken Soup and it was an ok food, but honestly with the lower kcals, I was feeding more and not saving any money.
 
So, yeah, I speak from experience...the school of hard knocks.  Thor grew very quickly on the purina LBP but luckily didn't have any problems because of it.  Subsequent pups have shown slow and steady growth on Innova.  Tyler, who was fed Pedigree for a whooping 7 weeks in another home has pano from growing too fast.  Man, he came home sooooo big!  At 8 months he's already as tall as Thor!
 
Food can make such an enormous difference that I truely do wish I had known better years ago......

I had a cat for almost 17 years and she ate Purina DeliCat and Purina NF. We got our dog when he was 1 year 2 months, Labor Day 2004. I don't know what the young'uns were feeding but based on a friends advice more educated than I was at the time, I switched him to Nutro Natural Choice Large Breed Puppy. My vet said I could feed him puppy formula until 2 years. Which I did. Then I switched him to Nutro Large Breed Adult Lamb and Rice and he was doing great on it. Then I came to i-dog. Numerous posts about how Nutro was, "at best, mid-grade" were convincing me I was doing wrong. A previous member posted a comparison to Innova. I really liked Innova's ingredient list. It looked good enough for me to eat. I switched him to Innova and he developed sneezing fits. I mean 15 in a row, several times a day. I went back to the Nutro Lamb and Rice and he's been fine ever since then. I've learned my lesson. If it works, don't fix it. And, to choose a food that he needs and not because it would be something a human such as myself would eat.
 
I think he does well on it because it's a simple food, befitting his breed history, with plentiful linoleic acid. Plus, he gets a steak or pork (cooked) when I'm fixing that for dinner.

prior to Sadie having to go onto Prescription Food she ate Pedigree or Purina One - which ever I could get locally.
 

Oh gosh - well - let's see....Jillian came to us on Diamond and was sickly as every.  You name it, she had it in terms of illness - everything from vomiting to runs to ear and skin infections.  We tried sooooo many foods - Nature's Recipe, Innova, California Natural, Bil Jac, etc. - we even tried Alpo just to see if she would eat it - then keep it down.  It reached a point that she wouldn't eat anything.  Finally tried home cooking - she ate and started to get better.  Finally, eliminated grains and went raw - voila - healthiest dog on the block.
 
George came to us on Chicken Soup and he was a healthy little guy.  But - once he got a load of what Jillian was eating, he boycotted his food and ate hers.  We had planned on changing him over once he got settled in but after having him for two days, he wasn't about to eat kibble.  Because he didn't have any problems when he came to us, there weren't any huge changes.  The two notable changes in him 1.)  smell 2.) his eyes were cloudy when he came to us and they are now clear as ever.
 
On the other hand - growing up, my dogs ate Gravy Train and were always healthy.  Perhaps these brands were a bit better back in the day than they are now?

as a child, mom fed our dogs on Kibbles n bits and table scraps and they also helped themselves to quite a bit of cat food and caught the occasional raw meal. First dog I had myself we fed Purina and table scraps and raw marrow/knuckle bones. She was a mess-- puked a lot, horrible skin and coat, horrible gas. Never occurred to us the crappy kibble was probably to blame for these problems. She developed lymphoma at a very young age. Which is when I started reading about doggie nutrition. Her last months of life she ate no kibble (raw and home-cooked) and she lived a lot longer than the vet predicted she would.
 

ORIGINAL: dyan

(Sooner, I can't say that I would be trying other premium food if your dogs are not doing good on it, I would keep them healthy eating what was best for them if it were me)

Oh if I had any inkling they were not healthy I'd switch them back immediately!

But they didn't ever get rid of the runs on Innova, didn't like California Natural, had gas on Canidae and just when they were doing good on Timberwolf Wild & Natural *I* decided *I* didn't like the company so now I'm thinking Barking at the Moon. They're not having bad or unhealthy reactions, just still looking for something that works good for the whole pack.