What do you feed your dogs? (Page 2)

We feed different stuff to our dogs... the younger dog would hoover anything and she is healthy, so she gets a light food. Usually Natural Choice Light Bites, but sometimes Science Diet, if we are on the cheap.

Our older dog is underweight, and has some health issues--including an autoimmune disorder that affects his skin and coat. He TYPICALLY eats Taste of the Wild grain free, supplemented with "moist and meaty" kibbles and bits on top. Sometimes we swap in Wolf King or Blue.

Three of our cats all eat "regular" cheap Science Diet cat food...the fourth eats Purina KD prescription food and a can of fancy feast classic every day.

We are fortunate with all of ours, they'll eat whatever you give them, and we can easily swap out one food for another.

We buy the Natural Choice/Nutro/Science Diet/Fancy Feast at Petco or at FleetFarm. The KD comes from the vet. I order all of our older dog's food at K9cuisine.com. They have good prices, GREAT customer service, free shipping on orders over $50 (and a bag of food is $50-70, so I usually get it), and you can get  up to five free sample bags per order--which I always do, and then when we run out of food, we have them on hand for emergencies :p

I try not to think about how much we spend on food for them a month. (Or vet bills, or cat litter. Or...) If I did, I'm sure it would depress me. :p

For those of you with a Costco nearby, the Kirkland brands dog foods are very good. They have 2 levels: a standard and a premium, which is grain free. The premium, which is called natures domain, is basically a Call of the Wild clone. Its even made by the same company, Diamond.

Yes, your dog can live just as long on the cheap food as he will on the good food. There will be differences though, Your dog will likely have a better coat and better skin on the good food. There will also be more waste to pickup in the yard, as there is more undigestibles in the lower end dog food. Lastly, you will be feeding more of the lower priced food, so the difference may not be as great as it seems. The grain free foods are more calorie dense than the lower end foods.

Been through the gamut--Blue Buffalo, Taste of the Wild, Acana Orijen.  Perused the website mentioned ...dogfoodadvisor as well.

Have always stuck to grain free.

Now it's Costco brand Nature's Domain.  And after reading the ingredient list, and looking at the packaging, I'd be willing to almost bet my rebate check that it's Taste of the Wild under Kirkland brand, selling at a fraction of what TOW sells.  Costco's is $32 for 28 lb bag and I'm pretty sure TOW is near $60 for the same amt.  Both kids gobble it up.

Also throw in occasionally Trader Joe's canned food.  Again, a fraction of what the other higher end canned dog foods go for.

and then from time to time, I spoil their turdy butts and cook for them, chicken and peas or some other veg with sweet potatoes. 

I agree and this is what I intended to do but could not find his regular food anywhere in town. I thought the Vet sold it but I was wrong.

Lot's to think about, thanks for the input.

Here is a pic of his first walk with the big dogs at my MIL's in the country. What a nice bunch of dogs. No running off or jumping on me. Polite sniffing of one another with no barking, growling or aggressive behavior. The GS is still a pup himself at just 11 months old but boy is he huge! The Golden is the grandpa of the group at 11 years old.

One of the simple pleasures in my life - a walk in the country with a dog (or 3) by my side .

I'm a DVM and have always fed Purina Pro Plan.  Never had any problems and my dogs have always done great on it.  I've been to the Purina research farms and they do great work and treat their nutrition research dogs very well (a lot better than many pet dogs I see out there!).  The facility is immaculate and the dogs are very well socialized and receive a lot of mental stimulation.

The whole "grain free" trend is largely a fad and the proposed benefits are unsupported by research. There may be some benefit to cats eating a grain free diet as they are obligate carnivores.  That being said, if people want to feed grain free to their dogs, there's no harm done.  It's just not really necessary in the vast majority of cases and certainly can be more expensive. 

Don't get me started on raw diets.  I will only say that I don't know one single veterinarian that feeds a raw diet.  I've hospitalized lots of dogs with serious bone impactions/GI obstructions, etc. that have been fed raw.

When I see pets in practice, I definitely see general health differences (coat, general appearance, etc) in those eating lower quality diets (Ol Roy, Kibbles N Bits, Beneful is terrible!!, cats on Meow Mix etc).

The other fad is novel protein sources.  The over-the-counter (OTC) diets that contain Salmon or other unique protein sources bug me.  Companies are only required to report about 70% of the protein source to the OTC (non-prescription) diets so lamb or salmon diets, etc all contain other protein sources like chicken, beef, etc.  They just aren't required to list them in the ingredients.  Don't be fooled. The mainstream use of these proteins in non-presciption foods limits our ability to treat pets with true food allergies because many dogs are now getting exposed to these other protein sources.  Sometimes we have to go with very expensive prescription rabbit or white fish diets to find a food that works for truly allergic dogs. 

Off my soap box now....

My dogs get Science Diet.  The Pedigree and whatnot might be cheaper per bag, but as others have pointed out, check out the serving size.  Often with cheaper dog food you have to feed the dog twice as much of it so the savings isn't as drastic as you think.

I fed them the regular Science Diet for years.  I did often struggle to keep them from gaining too much weight and found that I definitely had to feed them at the lower end of the serving size for their weight range.  My dogs are older now so I feed them the food for 7+ years old...as soon as we switched to that food it stopped being a "struggle" to keep them from gaining weight.  We didn't switch over until BOTH dogs were 7 (so the older dog was 8 when I swapped).

Anyway, I also think you get what you pay for when it comes to dog food.  I know there are a lot of other dog food brands out there but I think Science Diet (and a few others) is probably that "middle of the road" where it's not too cheap, not too expensive, not too hard to find and not the easiest to find.  If you go to the town where the Science Diet is a few days a week, just plan ahead.  Dog food has pretty decent shelf life and you know the dog is going to eat it eventually.  When I deploy I leave about 7 months of food with the petsitter.  And I ALWAYS buy the biggest bags.  One of the big bags lasts about a month around here (for two dogs).  They have come up in price in the last few years but I rarely pay full price.  I try to stock up for a few months whenever there is a sale and I NEVER let a coupon for the food expire.  $5 off Science Diet coupons seem to appear rather regularly for me...mostly sent by Petsmart.  So then I try to wait for a sale and pile on the coupon.  I rarely end up paying full price for dog food.  In the end, including treats, it probably cost me $30-$40/month to feed two dogs.  I wish I could eat that cheap. :D

Interesting....I have read so much about it but think aw jeez, like i have time for that!  Also interesting about novel protein sources. I avoid the fish version of kibble I buy cuz my one dog had weird reactions to it, possible allergy ?  I don't know.  but she's better on the chicken sweet potato version.....

TO the OP whatever you do, try to avoid dog specific forums, LOL for your query  There's lots of pontificating about foods and a few I've been on will trash ALL commercially prepared dog food.

This. Purchased at Sams. Our dogs are low maintenance and I like it that way.

It depends on what your dog is doing.

I trained dogs and ran field trials for 10 years, and hunted dogs day after day in sub freezing temperatures....try feeding a dog some food that doesn't have enough calories to keep up with their work and see what happens.  A working dog is the same as any athlete.....junk in, junk out.

I didn't read through all the posts, so someone may have mentioned this.  The cheaper foods have more fillers--this generally means that you have to feed more to give the same nutrients (not unlike us when we eat junk--in order to get all the nutrients you need, you will have to eat more food).  So more fillers + more food in = more poop to pick up.  The cheaper foods often don't end up cheaper because you feed twice as much.  Another thing to remember is that their lives are much shorter than ours.  If I ate crap food for a year, my health and fitness would definitely suffer; but it would only be say 1/80 of my life that I have eaten crap.  If your dog eats crap for a year, that is 1/15 of their lives--their health and fitness will suffer.  I think there is a balance to find between expense and quality.

One last point--just because the first ingredient is not 'real meat' does not mean it is not quality.  That is a marketing gimmick.  Ingredients are placed in order of weight.  If chicken or beef is the first ingredient, it is likely the weight of the meat prior to dehydrating (which is the form it is in in dry dog food).  If it is weighed after dehydrating, it is more likely the 4th or 5th ingredient.  And 'meal' is not necessarily a four letter word.  Chicken meal is the dried, ground version of chicken, containing a much higher protein content because most of the water has been removed.

Actually, it's not Call of the Wild, sorry, it's TASTE of the Wild.....here:

http://www.tasteofthewildpetfood.com/

As was posted above.....there are few "fillers".  Yes, it's expensive, but our 70 lb. Lab eats 2.5 cups per day to stay at her current fitness level, which is pretty active, so we're not really paying more for dog food.  When she was hunting every day she got 3.5 cups.....still much less than  the dogs we were hunting who were on "cheaper" food.

Wow - my 9 week old puppy is eating 2 cups of food a day right now of the 2 brands we have tried so far. 

Great post.  When we rescued our awesome doggy from the local SPCA, she was pretty ragged, had worms in her pooh, fleas...but she was great around the kids.  Anywhoo, when I bought dog food for the first time I just picked up the cheapest stuff I could find.  Ol' Roy.  Here's the deal, you literally will feed your dog TWICE as much each day because of the fillers with Ol' Roy.  You will be taking your doggy out twice as much for poohs.  My wife was the voice of reason, so we went with a quality dog food.  Our doggy eats HALF the volume, maintains the same weight, and has had no vet bills since other than the basic maintenance/vaccines/etc.   Did I also mention she does not eat scraps?  

With quality dog food, up to 3/4 cup, twice/day (thanks to TriAya, breakfast after we eat, and dinner after we eat), and we're set.  She's a 40-pounder, mutt that looks primarily golden retriever/yellow lab.

Good luck!

Democrats, Mailmen and Johova Witness..........

No really Iam's

Really great info everyone and since he is continuing to poop in my landscaping the idea of smaller piles is very appealing .

Buster gets CostCo food.

My first Boxer was so high-energy (by the way that picture is ADORABLE!!!) we were feeding him SIX CUPS OF ACTIVE WORKING DOG formula (Nutro Naturals) a day and he was still a slim pup! (yes vet confirmed there were no physical problems ... a lot of Boxers are on permawiggle as well and he certainly was). I was doing Schutzhund training with him at the time and he did get a ton of structured exercise as part of and along with it.

Truly "special" case dogs--like He Who Left his Brain --that are puppies, athletes, have medical problems etc. of course they're likely going to have different dietary requirements. Average dog doing average things, not so much. Once he's on to adult formula (and yes that'll be somewhat different for small or large breeds when they reach "adulthood" as it's defined) the poop thing and the quality/quantity/cost curves are things worth looking at.