Homemade RAW!!

People here will say every dog food is not good. your best bet actually is to ask your vet and do your own research. I feed my dog purina one large breed formula, and my other dog purina one senior. They never seem to have any problems. but you’ll hear people on here say its crap. So, I’ll tell you to ask your vet.

there is no best quality kibble that is good for every dog. and people here r correct. science diet is crap. it uses MANY fillers and uses a lot of corn which is an allergen in most dogs. go with something like canidae, innova, chicken soup brand, timberwolf organics, solid gold, or wellness. these r all very good brand. as for switching and bowel movements, it wont change his pooping if done correctly. switch over a period of a week or 10 days. start with a little bit of the new food and mainly the old stuff and every day start slightly increasing the amount of new and decreasing the amount of old and by day 10 have him on all new food. switching to a high quality holistic food will actually cause him to poop less because it doesnt have fillers. fillers go through a dog very quickly and make them poop more.

EDIT: yeah most vets reccomend it not because its a good food but because they get funding from the science diet company. also vets r only required to take one course in animal nutrition so they really dont know any better. i mean i asked my vet what good high quality holistic dog food was best and he said purina

I asked a question like this a while back because I used to feed Iams Eukanuba and I was hearing the same thing about that food. I have learned a lot form people on here that there isn’t one that is best. It all depends on your dog and the ingredients. Many are staying away from food with corn and other grains. Many dogs who have skin problems are allergic to grains. Many have also said to look at the protein source. Look for good quality meat…no animal by products….and look for fruits and veg’s in the foods ingredients as well. The one thing I found about the better foods is it is hard to find. You don’t find them at Petco or Petsmart. I ended up finding the food brands everyone here talks about at a little dog boutique about a mile from my home. Or, I believe you can order these foods online. Here’s a link that someone provided me so you can read up on what is rated top food. Good luck with your choice…I know it took me a while to research. I still haven’t decided which food…but now that I found a place that sells it, I’ve taken some samples and tried it with my dogs to see which brand works best for them. Good luck!

First you will need to educate yourself on the nutrition requirements of your dog. There is no one best quality food. Learn to read the ingredient lists. Look for at least 3 meat protiens listed in the first 5-7 ingredients. Stay away from food containing grains such as corn and wheat as well as the legume soy. Many dogs show allergic symptoms such as yeast infections in the ears and paws when fed these. Grains are usually used as fillers to make the kibble form in pieces. Rice ,barley and potato are fine especially sweet potato. Brewers rice is nothing but a production by product so stay away from that. Other red flags are sorghum,beet pulp,chicken fat,dyes and anything named as by product. Rule of thumb is you will not find a good quality kibble in any big box store. Good luck. If you want to consider feeding the RAW/BARF species appropriate diet there are many good sources of information available on the internet-just GOOGLE/YaHoo the key words.
Any diet change may affect your dogs poo for a few days. A well balanced high quality diet will lessen the size and amount of poos since there are less filler ingredients.

Dogfoodanalysis.com is a great tool to use to learn the ingredients of different foods however the site is put together by regular pet owners just like you and me. They are not food experts so use your own judgement when choosing a food.

check out this website: it gives you a good look and comparisons of different food, I believe science diet and eukanaba are examples of premium foods but this website will give you comparisons or super premium foods such as inova, canidae, chicken soup for the pet lovers soul( which the website said may have cancer causing agents in it)and solid gold. they tell you what is in the food and the difference between grocery store brands lik alpo and purina ( actually the same company) and eukanaba and Iams( again same company). and wholesale brands like solid gold and inova( which are the most popular and expensive. my dogs get canidae, a 40lb bag cost $33 us dollars. a 15 lb bag of solid gold cost $ 27.oo. you basicly want to look at the first three or four ingredients. for example purina Hi Pro has beef as its first ingredient, alpo has corn so your dog eats purina it is getting mostly beef, if it is eating alpo it is getting mostly corn. which would your dog prefer? which would you prefer if you were eating this stuff.super premium dog food has Meat, vegetables and fruit in it. the meat usually is a mixture or beef or chicken, lamb, salmon, usually more than one source of protien, vitamins and minerals. the oder in which the ingredients are listed tells you the amount of that ingredient that is contained in the food. I hope this helps you but please check out the website it is very informative.change the dogs food slowly and gradually to prevent diahrea. premium and super premium dog food can be found at pet supply plus.

Pedigree I guess

Canine nutrition is a topic I recommend you don’t trust your vet on.

Vets don’t get classes on the specific nutritional requirements of different animals. They get classes such as Small Animal Surgery, not classes like Canine Nutrition or Feline Nutrition.

Here are the required classes at a veterinary school:

You’ll see there are virtually no courses specific to a certain species or breed of animals.

Here’s a good article from the Wall Street Journal:

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Science Diet has very low quality foods. They is very little meat, the foods are all fillers and grain.

A review of Science Diet Puppy:

It is full of fillers and byproducts. In fact, there’s NOT A SINGLE ACTUAL MEAT in it!

And here are some of the Science Diet Adult foods:

You’ll see the same re-occurring theme: very little or no meat, lots of corn fillers

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Here’s here to choose a *QUALITY* dog food:

Read the ingredients on the food you buy. Go with a high quality dog food. A grain should not be in the first couple ingredients ingredient (corn and such are mainly fillers, dogs don’t digest it well). Avoid foods that have a lot of by products listed.

Here is an article about byproducts:

And an article on what ingredients to avoid:

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There is no single food that is best. For example, some dogs thrive on grain-free foods, while grain-free is too rich for other dogs. What you want to find is the high-quality food that *your dog* does best on. (I recommend feeding dry food instead of wet. It’s healthier for the gums and teeth.)

Some GOOD foods are :
* Merrick -
* Solid Gold -
* Canidae -
* Timberwolf -
* Orijen -
* Wellness -
* Chicken Soup brand -
* Blue Buffalo -
* Innova -
* Innova EVO -

Or check this website for good foods:
(I recommend only feeding foods rated 4, 5, or 6 stars. Anything 3 stars or less, I would stay away from.)

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Stay away from grocery stores brands. They are low-quality foods chalk full of fillers, preservatives, dyes, etc.. (Grocery store foods are those like Beneful, Old Roy, Alpo, Pedigree, Purina, etc.)

Beware premium foods. Premium does not mean good nutritionally, and is not a nutritionally high quality food. It has the same types of ingredients as grocery store foods, just a bit better quality of those not-so-good ingredients. (Premium foods are those like Iams, Eukanuba, Science Diet, etc..)

Another thing to be wary of: A lot of vets will recommend what they sell in their office. They get profit from the brands they keep on their shelves, that’s why they push it. Truth is, vet schools don’t focus a lot on nutrition. It’s not saying that a vet is a bad vet because he recommends those foods, a lot of vets just are told this is good food, so they pass the message along without proper nutrition knowledge. Also, some dog food brands (like Hills) support vet schools, so vets have heard of it from the time they start college, which makes them think it’s good as well.

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Higher quality food may seem more expensive at first, but it evens out. The higher quality the food, the less fillers eaten (and therefore the less poop comes out the other end). Your dog eats more to try to get the nutrition it needs, and most of the food just passes right on through. Also, it will make your animals healthier, so you save money on vet bills in the long run.

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Big box petstores like Petco and Petsmart rarely have quality foods. (I do believe that PetCo sells Solid Gold and Natural Balance brands and Petsmart sells Blue Buffallo, which are all quality foods, but most of the foods aren’t.)

Also, grocery stores and Walmart aren’t good places to buy food either.

Your best bets for getting quality dog food are:
- small, locally owned petstores
- dog boutiques
- farm supply stores

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When switching foods, do it gradually. I do this over about a two week timespan:
25% food A, 75% food B
50% food A, 50% food B
75% food A, 25% food B
100% food A

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EDIT:

RE: chicken soup for the pet lovers soul( which the website said may have cancer causing agents in it)

Just to clarify, Chicken Soup brand does *not* have cancer causing agents in it. The concern was about fish ingredients being preserved with ethoxyquin, but Chicken Soup brand has since then guaranteed that they do not use ethoxyquin preserved fish.
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There is no one food that works best for all dogs. Every dog is different and they will react differently to different foods. I feed Canidae and am very happy with the results, but I do know dogs that don’t do well on it.

When looking for a dog food, read the ingredients list. The dog food analysis site that several people have given a link to is a great place to start learning about what really goes into dog food. They give AFFCO definitions of ingredients and list the things that can legally (although aren’t necessarily) be in a product under those definitions. Pay special attention to the first 5-7 ingredients as these make up the bulk of the food (ingredients are listed in order of weight/volume, meaning there is more of the first ingredient than the second and so on).

Look for a food that lists a specified meat meal (chicken meal, lamb meal, fish meal, etc) as the first ingredient. Meal has gotten a bit of a bad rap due to things like poultry by-product meal and many people think that it indicates a poor quality ingredient. However, meal is simply a dried powder form of the ingredient. Ingredients are listed by weight/volume BEFORE processing. Real meat looks really good as the first ingredient on an ingredients list because people will figure that since it’s first there must be more of it than any other ingredient. However, a large volume of muscle or organ meat is water…during processing they become dehydrated and the actual amount of meat in the food will be less than whatever the second, third, or even fourth ingredient is. Since a specified meat meal is already dried, there is very little, if any, volume lost during processing and there really will be more of it than any other ingredient. If a specified meat meal is not the first ingredient, it should be the second ingredient with a specified meat as the first ingredient.

I try to avoid more than two grains (including soy, which is technically not a grain but rather a legume) in the first five or six ingredients and no corn in the first five ingredients. Grains or something similar (such as millet, which is a seed, or potatoes) are generally necessary to act as binder to hold the kibble together. I personally don’t think that corn or wheat are necessarily bad if your dog is not allergic to them, but they are common allergies and highly processed grains usually don’t have much, if anything, in the way of nutritional value. They are also very cheap and not very digestible for dogs, so they should not make up the bulk of the food.

Finally, avoid any food that lists artificial coloring, sugar (including fructose and glucose), salt, and preservatives such as BHT, BHA, and ethoxyquin like the plague. These ingredients do not add ANYTHING nutritionally to dog food. Sugar and salt are added simply to make the food taste better to dogs and are not good for them. Any food that adds these ingredients is the doggy equivilant of pizza and potato chips. Artificial colorings are often proven or strongly suspected to be carcinogens. While these colorings may be safe for human junk food, which does not usually make up 100% of our diet, they are going to be fed almost exclusively day in and day out for the entire life of your pet and they do have a cumulative effect (ie a little bit may not cause cancer, but a little bit plus a little bit pluss a little bit probably will). Same for the preservatives I mentioned. BHA and BHT are actually banned from human use in many countries because of strong evidence that they are carcinogens and have proven to be carcinogenic in animal studies. Ethoxyquin was orignially developed as a rubber stabalizer and later as a pesticide and has never been proven safe over a lifetime of use.

man oh man. lol. check with the vet that you take the dog too ans follow their suggestion.

people on here would tell u every dog food is not good when it is a matter of personal preference.