Lamb & Rice dry food

You could have a complete blood work done to see that everything is within normal ranges.

 
blood work will not reveal minor nutritional problems, only very serious imbalances. Minor nutritional imbalances over time erode the dog's health, and may lead to a serious imbalance that can be picked up in bloodwork. For example, you can feed an adult dog a diet of nothing but meat for a long time, possibly several years,  before he starts having serious problems due to lack of calcium. But the bloodwork won't reveal the deficiency because the body will be sucking calcium and other minerals out of the bones to maintain proper blood levels.
This is what happens to many humans, who often eat way too little calcium and end up developing osteoporosis at age 65, and who often eat way too many carbs and end up developing diabetes at age 55. But bloodwork at age 25 won't reveal these dietary deficiencies.

Lamb is a lean meat,

I have always thought Lamb is one of the fattiest meats you can feed?Infact i am very sure about this.

Papillion i thought i read about the lack of EFA's in one of billinghursts books,but i'm starting to wonder if i'm confusing it with another meat [&o] I'llhave to look it up again.

Edie--If you find it let me know...I'd be very interested in reading how he came to that conclusion.

How many people feed their dogs the lamb and rice formulas? I switched my two dogs over to lamb and rice, and they both are doing better (no more soft stools). Any favorite brands of lamb and rice that you like?

ORIGINAL: remali

How many people feed their dogs the lamb and rice formulas?  I switched my two dogs over to lamb and rice, and they both are doing better (no more soft stools).  Any favorite brands of lamb and rice that you like?

 
I feed Blue Buffalo Lamb and Rice along with Solid Gold Wolf-Cub.  Since my PH doesn't tolerate domestic poultry (turkey or chicken) I try to give him the healthiest and most diverse protein sources I can find.  We're also trying out the new Blue Buffalo fish based food.  It seems to be pretty well liked and his stools have firmed up even more with that.  And at least twice a week he gets a raw egg mixed in with his food...mmmm yummy!

I am the one that feeds purina and some homecooked food.  Someone said that they were healthy despite the purina because of the other foods.  Well, actually they get about 2/3 Purina and 1/3 meat & veggies.  They get 2 cups of purina in the morning and soemtimes i scramble up an egg for each one and put in with their breakfast.  At night they get under a cup of Purina and then their cooked meats (chicken hearts, gizzards or liver, beef heart or liver, sometimes ground beef or chicken, frsh fish if I have caught some, canned mackeral, salmon or sardines) and their canned unsalted green beans & carrot slices.  Sometimes i boil sweet potatoes or white potatoes with the meat, sometimes some squash.  I give them fish about 4 times a week, meat the other 3 nights.  Yesterday at my grocery store they had a "blow out" sale on jars of Gerber's baby food, good until Jan. 07.  I bought 78 jars of the sweet potatoes and about a dozen of green beans.  One of the jars gives about two spoons full for each dog and I put a jar of the sweet potaotes on their purina this morning--along with a scrambled egg each..  They love sweet potaots and beans, so these little jars of strained baby food, a couple of spoons for breakfast is an added treat.
 
I know several farm people who drank lots of fresh, PURE milk, and ended up with the osteo., my grandmother being one.  Somethings are going to happen regardless of diet.  I was raised on a farm.  We had tons of fresh veggies.  We raised our own beef and hogs, plus had fresh killed quail, dove, duck, chicken, fish.  We ate totally balanced diets.  We ate lots of pears, blackberries, apples, peaches.  Mom froze and canned and put up our jams and jellies.  We did not use preservatives.  Yet at age 10 I came down with rheumatic fever.  My Mom got colon cancer.  My dad died at age 58 of a stroke following surgery to clear a blood clot out of vein in neck.  My Mom died at 68 of brain cancer.  i have rheumatoid arthritis. and have had since in my mid 40's.  My one brother is 53 and can hardly walk due to bad knees and ankles, desite having had surgery.  So eating the best didn't prevent cancer, arthritis, etc from happening in my family.
 
Life expectancy for a golden retrieve is 10 to 12 years.  They are prone to cancer, HD, thyroid and eye problems.  These are not caused by any one food, nor prevented by any one food--it is just in their breed.  My Buck turned 11 in Feb.  He has some arthritis in his spine and hips, but not bad.  He trots instead of walking, except on on leash.  He has trouble with night vision & some problem with depth perception, but his eyeballs are "healthy".  Just old age eyes.  His muscle tone and coat are great.  His heart and lungs are clear and strong.  The only problem in his blood work was a kidney infection, first  time ever.  I would have to say Purina has not hurt him at all.  Nor did it hurt my irish Setter we lost at age 12 1/2 to bone cancer in rear leg.
 
I could get a dog tomorrow that would awful on purina and I most definately would use something else.  And even tho it sounds like I am defending Puriina, i am not.  I am defending that fact that most dogs can eat purina, Eukanuba,  Pedigree, and even Science diet and be healthy. And many of these same dogs would not do okay on TO. Eagle pack, Wellness, etc. (Buck didn't)  And the same can be reverse--,many would not do well on the P, E, P but would do great on the TO, EP, W. 
 
And as for the blood work, it is a darn good indicator if something is wrong.  And another thing, if it could take years to know that eukanuba, Purina, etc was casuing problems all along, the very same rule would apply to the TO, Eagle pack, Wellness, Inonva, etc.
 
And my dogs health aren't based solely on the full blood work, and I mean Full blood work, but also in other tests and exams. coat, mouth, ears, eyes, fecals, etc, plus poor Buck gets the old "finger up the rear", which he is not crazy about. 
 

I agree with you, Sandra. Much of something is genetics or stress, having little to do with the food eaten. All the Innova or TO in the world is not going to keep a Lab or Great Dane from getting HD. A ton of carrots and green beans is not going to keep a Siberian Husky from getting Coroneal Dystrophy. It just happens from getting old. Everyone I've known personally and locally has had aged dogs that lived all of their life on Purina, usually. And they problems they have are from age, not food. Example, my in-law's 14 year old Lhasa Apso, who eats Purina Senior. She has a cataract in one eye and her back muscles get strained if she jumps off of the bed the wrong way. She's just dadgummed old. I also agree that it is fairly easy to spot when a dog is not doing well on a food. I had Shadow on Innova for two weeks but it didn't take a whole two weeks for symptoms to show up. That's just how long I kept feeding it to him until I gave up the ghost and put him back on what he was already doing well on. I could have gone to the vet and see if there was a way to stop his sneezing fits and the vet would have asked what if anything has been changed in his life. He would have told me to go back to what Shadow did well on.
 
Someone had said, in a tone denoting ridicule, of why someone should wait 16 years to see if their dog was doing well on a food. That's almost a logical impasse. Any dog living to 16 years is a good thing. I would say the same about raw. If your dog is living a long, healthy life on raw, keep doing it. If your dog is living half past forever on Eagle Pack, don't change, regardless of the human temptation to fiddle with something until it doesn't work anymore (the curse of being an ape.)
 
When dogs eat, they don't say "Mmm, by golly, that felt like the right amount of protein but I think the menadione was a bit flat." They eat until their body tells them they are full. And they either get the right amount of nutrition or they don't. So, for example, Nutro has the right amount of kcals for the amount in a day that Shadow eats. Plus, I give him cooked meat, here and there
 
I've learned that it's not about what I think looks good in a food, it's about what my dog needs to be healthy and can eat.

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Well, after giving it a lot of thought, I decided to try a different dog food.  So, today I bought some Eagle Pack Holistic Select, along with some canned Eagle Pack.  I've noticed that lately both Bailey and Bentley just seem to turn up their noses at the Eukanuba, and I got to thinking that maybe Bailey just hasn't been getting enough to eat.  I'm mixing the old food in with the new, to make it a gradual switch, so we can hopefully avoid any soft stools.  I didn't give them a lot of the canned, just smeared some on the dry food, I think that perhaps Bentley has lost a little bit of weight too, my sister thought he looked a bit more "lean".  I know that Eagle Pack is very highly regarded, and has good ingredients, so I'm hoping that perhaps a better quality dog food will help (maybe more palatable?).  Altho, they did seem to like the Eukanuba in the beginning and seemed to do real well on it, at first.  Kind of puzzling....... Bailey, my Poodle, acts so perky and frisky though, so I know he isn't ill or anything like that, he sure has a lot of energy.  Anyway, they sure did love the new food, we'll see how it goes!

Just wanted to add.....totally agree with you too Sandra, well said!  Sometimes it doesn't matter what we eat, or what they eat....if it is genetics or something else, it will just happen.  It all just depends.   And, there really isn't a "good" dog food or a "bad" dog food.....it's what your dog does best on.

Ron, you and I may be about as far apart as we can get in Texas, but seems we are close in our ideas on dog food.
 
I nave never checked out fat on lamb, etc, but years ago we had an elderly neighbor with stomach problems and her doc told her to eat lamb.  I do not remember the reason for eating lamb, just that he told her to eat lamb.  I bought lamb patties to try them and I really liked them.  This was when we lived in Ohio.  I rarely find lamb patties down here, but when I do, I jump on them for the freezer. 

Let's hope it works out well.
 

When I lived in Dallas, we used to eat at Miami Subs and I would always have their Gyro, which is made with lamb and a side of tsatsakis sauce. Good stuff, Maynard.
 
As for similarities, we were probably raised by similar people. My mother was technically born on the Arkansas side of Texarkana, because they had the best hospital in 1945. But she was raised in Bowie County until about 10. Then they moved to California. I was born in California and we moved to Texas when I was 10. My mother's father emigrated with his family from Germany when he was 10. Something in our family about the magic of number 10. But we are old school, raised with people that honed our bs detectors to razor sharpness. The list could go on and on.
 

My dad was an east Texas farm boy--just out of Tyler, went into the navy early '42, was stationed in Australia, met and married my Mom, a city girl there.  Daddy was shipped out in the Spring of '45 and I was born June 4, 1945 there in Perth, Western Australia, but Mom and I  came to the states and joined Daddy on the farm in June '46.  Mom was no where a near a country girl, but she learned.  And she was so honest that if she got home and found she had been given l penny to much in change, she would walk back back to the general store to give Miss Nell & Mr. Alvin that penny.
 
Mama taught a Sunday School class, Daddy sang in our little choir and was in charge of all the Sunday School classes.  Mama was very involved with the do's at school (she never learned to drive, always had to walk, but our little farm was right on the edge of town so only had to walk a  little over a mile).  They most definately taught us to respect our elders, love and take care of our animals (except don't become attached to ones that would be slaughtered for our table) and always tell the truth no matter if others would not agree--and that is why i always tell that I feed my dogs Purina, or Science Diet when the situation calls for it.

and always tell the truth no matter if others would not agree--and that is why i always tell that I feed my dogs Purina, or Science Diet when the situation calls for it.

 
And that's the difference between my boss and me. He tells people what they want to hear and I tell people the truth as best as I can see it, which is not what people always want to hear. I'm the engineer type with way more experience, technical knowledge, and license than he has, but he has that salesman thing and an excellent way with people. So, he sweet talks into getting us the work and we accomplish the work. Whereas, my best form of butt-kissing is to keep my mouth shut so that I don't say something that hurts someone's feelings.

I use wellness lamb and rice.His coat is so soft and shiny[]