Need to find a good food

TheDogHouseBCMPD

I thought it was a decent food

Hi,

Can i ask why you thought it was a decent food? I am always intrigued on why people pick these foods and why they think they are good. 

 Most likely due to advertising. Look at their commercials - you see lots of good veggi's raining down from the sky. You don't, however, see higher quality foods advertised at all. It's word of mouth for those foods for the most part.

Well, I used to feed Iams and I can tell you why I did for so long.

Advertising is one, definitely even though I consider myself to be very jaded and savvy but name recognition is part of advertising. You subconciously figure, oh, I've heard of that, if I've heard of it that must mean the company is big and if the company is big it must be good. I know, I should totally know better given that I don't take that kind of attitude about my own food.

And I never really bothered to look closely at the ingredients. I figured I was buying the best most expensive food in the grocery store so whatever was in it had to be okay. And even if I had, I'm not sure at the time that I could have told you what a good ingredient profile for a dog would look like. Dogs will pretty much eat anything so just having a dog around the house doesn't automatically impart knowledge of what they'd do best eating. If you asked my dogs, it would be corn chips and white bread.  

I didn't understand about grocery store foods versus pet store foods. I didn't understand about the comparative price factor. And every time my vet asked what I was feeding and I said Iams large breed, she nodded and smiled. I figured she would have told me if I was not feeding the right food.

So mainly it was just about being kind of naive, in a way that I have never been about stuff for me and my body. I'm a college educated person with a very healthy skepticism of advertising and mainstream media, but somehow that did not translate into what I fed my dog until I started really researching it after we moved back to a city and I had more pet store choices and we got a second dog that prompted me to do more reading and research about dogs just in general.  

If the Canidae  turns out to be too rich as I suspect it will be going from Beneful , you might want to try HealthWise. It is Natura's hidden secret. I have bought it for less than $1.00 per lb for a $20.00 bag. Pet Food Direct sells a 35 lb bag for $ 32.99 . It is a for all life stages on the Adult Chicken or the Lamb.  My dog digested it well and had a great coat.  Good luck on the switch .

http://www.naturapet.com/brands/healthwise.asp

If you need to stick with big box stores, you can still do better, for your money. Walmart has Maxximum Nutrition Lamb and Rice. Petsmart has Authority, and Nutro. Something like Purina ONE would be a big step up. Beneful is expensive! I think you'll be shocked that you're saving money, when you make a switch.

 

There were a few different reasons I thought it was ok, and HoundLove summed it up pretty well.  My vet and the trainer both knew I was using Beneful and they never said anything, I figured they would if it wasn't a good choice.  The advertising played a part as well, including what they put on their website.  When you click on the different recipes of Beneful they tell you "all about" different things that should be in a food, and what that ingredient does, and when they are telling you that, they actually list meat first.  I looked at ingredient lists, but they didn't mean much to me (I didn't know what the different things meant) and (appearantly all the ones I looked at were the same crappy level) they looked about the same.  A friend had a very picky eater and she ended up switching to Beneful and said how much she loved it, so that's why I looked at it in the first place.

 Thanks for all the suggestions, I've got alot to choose from.

 Just be sure when you do make the switch to give it some time and do the switch slowly. Mix in a little of the new food with the Beneful for a few days, gradually increasing the amount of the new and decreasing the amount of the old. Beneful has a lot of carbs and fillers so the Canidae or whatever you choose is going to be a lot richer and that could cause some loose stools for a couple weeks. Dogs who are not used to eating a variety of different foods wind up with sensitive stomachs and you have to give them time to adjust to a new food.

Well, I got directions from the Canidae website for 3 store close to my area.  I spent 3 hours looking for 2 of them (they were supposed to be w/in 15-20 minutes of my house )  I went back on line to look up the directions 2x and stopped at gas stations for directions.  Gave up and went with DH to get a late lunch between his jobs (he had to work over time and then go to his PT job).  After that I went in search of store number 3, which I did manage to find after 45 minutes (again it was supposed to be 10 minutes from where we ate) and driving past it 2x because the name on the sign was different than the name of the company....and they were closed and they aren't open on Sundays.

I decided to go to PetSmart and see what was there.  I ended up getting Nutro Natural Choice Lame and Rice.  We just found out that Mystic has hip dysplasia and this food has glucosymine (sp?) and chondrotin (sp?) which is supposed to help joints.  Also no wheat and no beef which I was told isn't good for joints.  It also fit the price range I needed...44 lbs for $34.  So I've started the switching process.  I've only put a little bit of the Nutro in with their food, but man, they loved it.  Mystic usually eats her food slowly and may even let it sit for awhile before she eats it....she had finished her whole bowl before I finished mixing everyone elses food.

Just wanted to give an update and let you know what we went with.

I know a lot of dogs who do very well on Nutro Lamb and Rice. I would add extra joint stuff, for a dog with hip dysplasia, though. For a regular dog, the amount in the food is all they need. For a dog with serious joint issues, most foods do not have enough to help.

I agree with Jennie.

Our dogs did pretty darn well on the Nutro Natural Choice (large breed)--the major difference I've noted since we switched to Natural Balance is in Marlowe's coat. Since he's a black dog with a single smooth coat, you can really tell easily when he's having dry skin issues. He gets all dandruffy and his coat gets very dull when normally it's so shiny it's blinding. With Conrad who's got a buff-colored thick longish double-coat, goodness knows what's going on which his skin because he's so hairy I can never tell if he's too dry or too greasy or whatever. He's just...hairy! But Marlowe's coat is like an instant diagnosis of how well he's doing on a particular food.

Jennie's also right about the glucosamine. A dog who's having joint problems needs a lot more in order to get a therapeutic amount.  Fortunately, glucosamine/chondroitin pills are not very expensive and easily found even at regular grocery stores. You can go ahead and give the human ones, there's no difference. Conrad takes Trader Joe's store brand glucosamine/chondroitin every evening for his back problems.

That is a step up and Nutro is also really easy to find, which is convenient.  I bet your dogs will do nicely on it.

My 8 year old golden retriever, KayCee is on the Nutro NC senior lamb and rice and she loves it.  But she also loved the purina one senior i had her on--til the store stopped carrying the One senior.  So i had to switch. 

 KayCee had one knee operated on at 16 months, the other 14 months later--l;uxating patellas.  She has been on the glucosamine joint sups ever since her first surger.  Even tho she is on the food with the added stuff, i still giver her the capuls every day.  I hafe also been told, but will not swear to it, that Ester C and fish oil also help the joints.  KayCee also ages these sups daily--a fish oil in the morning, one at night, and a vitamin E at night.

That actually was going to be another question.  While I was at the store looking at these bags I had glucosamine/condrotin pills in my hand.  A rep from Blue Buffalo came up to me to promote their food, I told her about Mystic and showed her the pills.  She said you had to be careful not to overdose them with stuff in their food and then supplements on top of that.  I was wondering if that was true so I was gonna make a new thread about that, but since it's been brought up already.....do I need to worry I'll OD her if I give her supplements in addition to whats in the food?

Absolutely not. The food doesn't have much in it, at all. Besides that, glucosamine and chondroitin and safe.  The Nutro guy told me they were excreted in urine, but he said the same about excess vit C (which is NOT true, excess s causes diahrrea).