Our Dog Bear Died: Dog Food -- A must for Dog owners

I'm a somewhat skeptical person by nature, so much so that I'm often accused of being cynical and negative about things. I'm really not all that cynical and I'm not really negative, but try to keep a healthy amount of skepticism in my thinking. Yet, in spite of this I continue to be surprised by the things I believed and the groups and organizations that I've trusted. The most recent splash of caustic reality I've had to endure relates to dog food.

We recently had a dog die of bloat which is something that I had never heard of even though it is a very common and very lethal condition that afflicts large breed dogs. You can read more about bloat here: http://freezone.ssan.com/Pet_Care/Bloat_in_Dogs/index.html During my investigation of bloat and it's causes, I learned that diet can have an impact on it. Since we still have 2 large breed dogs and 1 medium breed dog, I began investigating dog food and what I learned was shocking.

First off, please keep in mind that there is a lot of contradictory information about dog nutrition available on the Internet. Also, every brand of dog food devotes several web pages to explaining why their food is the best food available on the market. Even the people who talk strictly about dog's nutritional needs often disagree with each other and push their own feeding plan. What I've done in the past week is read a lot about dog nutrition and dog food and I've made some of my own conclusions about the subject. I've decided which arguments to believe and which to ignore. I think that I've struck a pretty fair balance and I think I've made some sound decisions. Here are the conclusions I've drawn:

Dogs are carnivores by nature. As such, their food should be meat based. All dry dog food will have some type of grain or cereal filler in it, but you need to limit the type and amount. Corn and wheat should be avoided as much as possible as they can not be digested by dogs and thus provide no value. They can also actually cause problems in many dogs. Soy products and brewers rice should also be avoided. Many people will tell you that dogs need to eat a diet containing 30% protein and 18% crude fat minimum. While that may be true to a certain extent, I think that the actual ingredients in the food are far more important that the final percentages. A very good food that is 24% / 14% is going to be better for your dog than a 30% / 20% food full of corn, wheat, and soy. A lot of people also tell you to avoid meat ingredients called "meal" and to avoid the meat "by products" as well since they are generally scraps and you don't know everything that's in them. I don't really agree with that so much. Sure, whole, human grade meat is better but come on, so what if there's some feathers and beaks. It's been cooked and it's better than another grain in the food. Besides, my dog would eat all of the feathers if it found a dead chicken and so would yours.

So the quest begins to find a meat based dog food with no corn or wheat fillers, no soy, and preferably no brewers rice. Keep in mind that when reading the ingredient list on a bag of dog food that they are listed in descending order by weight. In other words, the main ingredient is first. If you focus on the top five or six ingredients, you get a pretty good picture of what the food is made of.

I chose the food that I've been feeding the dogs for the past 11 years based on what the professional breeder I bought my first dog from was feeding all his dogs. I assumed that it was good food and it certainly cost more than most of the other foods . Where was that skepticism when I needed it? It turns out the food I've been feeding the dogs was horrible and next to worthless nutritionally speaking. In fact, I've learned that almost all commercially available dog food is seriously lacking in one way or another. I have been feeding my dogs Pedigree. It turns out that it's main ingredient and 2 of it's top three is corn! Pedigree is in fact no better than Alpo or Old Roy, although it is significantly more expensive.

The next shocking thing I discovered was that the "Veterinarian recommended" brands, Science Diet, Iams, and Eukanuba are also a bunch of garbage. They are only marginally better than generic store brands and even that is debatable. In fact some formulations of Wal-Mart's high end store brand, "Maxximum" are probably a little better than the three veterinarian brands. I really feel sorry for anyone who's been paying the exorbitant prices for those dog foods. Here's the first 6 ingredients in Science Diet: Chicken, Ground Whole Grain Corn, Ground Whole Grain Sorghum, Ground Whole Grain Wheat, Chicken By-Product Meal, Soybean Meal. Did I mention that soy is one of the worst things that you can feed a dog? I'll give Science Diet some credit for using whole grains, but this is still a grain based food and corn, wheat, sorghum, and soybeans are not things that a dog needs.

So now I've told you that you can't buy good dog food at the grocery store and you can't buy good dog food at the vet's office. So now what? Well, if you listen to certain folks on the internet, you might start tossing raw chicken breasts to your dogs and maybe an egg or two now and then. I must admit that I was tempted to give it a try, but that seems a little extreme. I'm sure there are a lot of dog owners out there doing quite a good job feeding their dogs a raw food diet, but I don't think that's for me. There's got to be something wrong with a meal plan referred to as BARF (Bones And Raw Food).

So I began searching for dog food recommendations. Recommendations are few and far between for dog food and if you just read the ingredients you'll understand why. I found a lot of recommendations for off brands like Eagle Pak and Bil Jacs, but when I checked their ingredients they weren't much better than Maxximum. Also, home delivery of those foods was extremely expensive and let's be realistic. Money is going to play a factor. Another food that is often recommended is Innova and initially, I thought I'd found the answer. Innova's top six ingredients are turkey, chicken, chicken meal, barley, brown rice, and potatoes. That's pretty good! The first three ingredients are meat and while there are 3 grains, none of them seem like really bad ones. However, when I look at the "Large Breed" formulation of Innova, I notice that it contains citric acid. Citric acid has been linked to bloating in large breed dogs. So Innova is putting one of the worst ingredients for a large dog in their large breed formulation!

That's another thing to keep in mind. Just because one variety of a company's dog food is pretty good, that doesn't mean another will. In fact there are often incredibly wild variations in ingredients from one formulation to another. Just one more thing to confuse you.

So I still haven't found anything that's any better than Maxximum which is about as good as Eukanuba: Chicken, Corn Meal, Ground Whole Grain Sorghum, Ground Whole Grain Barley, Chicken By-Product Meal, Fish Meal.

Enter the feed store. Despite many Internet warnings to never buy dog food from a feed store, I decided to ask a co-worker who also owns a feed store what types of dog food she had. Amongst the medium grade foods and a couple really bad foods, I found that she sold a real gem: "Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover's Soul". Yeah, I agree it's a really lame name, but the ingredients are: Chicken, turkey, chicken meal, ocean fish meal, cracked pearled barley, whole grain brown rice. That's pretty good! It also has some probiotics added as well. (That's hippie-talk for good digestive bacteria).

I'll be getting my first bag of the Chicken Soup on Monday and I'll be transitioning the dogs to it over the next week or two. It's a little more expensive ($25 for 35 lbs versus $18 for 40 lbs), but being better food, the dogs don't actually have to eat as much of it, so I don't think I'll see much of a difference. Also, that's still a lot cheaper than the vet brands and the stuff you'll find at a pet store.

I'm sure that there's a lot of other good dog foods out there. In fact Innova's regular adult formulation is pretty good, just stay away from the Large breed variety. We'll see how the dog's do on the new food. If you're currently feeding your dog a store variety of food, I would certainly recommend that you at least check the ingredients. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to help. There's a lot more stuff I learned in the past week that I haven't gotten around to sharing, but this blog's getting long enough as it is.

Stay tuned for my cat food evaluation in the next couple weeks.