Q&A: What is the best dog food for my dog and puppy?

Deficiencies or excesses may not be evident immediately in an adult dog, but they will manifest in a slow deterioration of the animals health and reproduction capabilities over time. You don’t want to change every week or month articles suggest that change be done over time. There are pet owners that leave there dog on the same food for 11 years this is bad and do cause allergic reactions. (i.e “change is good with caution”)

I will. 

The healthiest food you can provide a dog doesn’t come from a bag. It doesn’t get overly processed and stripped from its nutrients. It contains 60-70% moisture and finally it is RAW! Please do some research and that’s all it takes to provide the best for your dog. Don’t be a victim of the multi-billion dollar kibble industry that wants you to buy their product. Feed a carnivore what a carnivore is meant to eat.
first step: youtube – Dr. Karen Becker from mercola healthy pets and LEARN!

There are commercial raw food that’s actually available & some are not that expensive.. depends on the protein source you’re buying. I know beef is expensive but chicken is cheap & probably cheaper than kibble. Also you can possibly save more money on vet bills by going raw. Your friend is doing something wrong if anal glands are full…feed him green tripe..his dog might be enzyme deficient. FYI there is no such thing as a natural kibble nor will it be close to natural. Cooked diet is closest.

my dog eats triumph and while its not the best food it is better then beneful. i suspect my dog was allergic to the grain in beneful because he kept licking his paws. now his fur is softer and he is itching less. triumph comes in 2 flavors chicken and oatmeal and lamb and rice.

Just remember the better food you feed your dog over the years the healthier they will stay and you will have less vet bills. Be sure to keep your dog up to date on shots, and monthly heart worm pills as those pills kills other worms like hook and whip worms which they can catch off the ground anywhere. Thanks for watching!

Right now I have my 2 adult toy poodles on the BLUE line of food. I recently got 2 more poodles (puppies) and I have started them on Rachael Ray’s NUTRISH brand. Can you give any insight on those?

Thank you 🙂

Actually there are so many opinions on dog food it’s crazy. I just fed my dog cooked pheasant and he has been having bleeding bowels since. I called the store i bought the food from and she said this is normal as it means he is detoxifying. ARG…. Raw food diet i’m not a fan of. Blue a lot of people are using. but more important than ingredients is where is the food made? IF china it’s pure poison don’t buy it!

Thanks for that info. I get tons of people telling me they are feeding their dogs Blue so this is great news. Thank you for taking the time to tell me what’s up with Blue. thanks a bunch!

It’s good food. I personally didn’t like it as it caused my dogs to poop like 7-8 times a day. LOL

I always buy the 4 health lamb meal and rice formula for my pekingese dog that is the only dog food he can eat other dog food makes him sick so im glad I find him a healty dog food which used to $5.00 now it is $7.41 he is now 1 year and 3 months I buy my dog food at my local tractor supply where I live at.

I would suggest feeding The Honest Kitchen foods. they have a bunch of dehydrated raw food. It is dried and you add an equal amount of warm water to it, wait 5 minutes and feed. Your dog will get a fresh tasting , human grade food, with all the phytonutients still in it.. NO GRAINS in most of their foods, Dogs, ALL dogs cannot properly digest carbohydrates, thatmeans grain. They lack the enzyme called amylase (I think that is the one) so cannot properly digest grain. It can rot in the stomach if in the digestive tract too long. So try a grain free food. I feed just honest kitchen for 4 years and my dogs are healthy and happy. They have white teeth, (I never have to clean the teeth) they don’t scratch anymore, they have NO DOGGIE SMELL. Doggie smell is not normal, it is the grains that make that awful doggie smell in some dogs. Honest Kitchen and all the grain free better foods are more expensive but you feed so much less. I feed my 75lb dobermans only 2.5 cups each for a day. 1 cup in the morning and 1.5 in the afternoon. I do sometimes buy a cheap on sale chicken and make a pot of broth and use that to rehydrate the food. My girls love it. Other foods that are grain free are Orijen and Taste of the wild (I think TOW is a diamond food and has been recalled in the past, but should be good now) The best think you can do is feed a RAW diet,, and the next best thing is a grain free premade diet like Honest Kitchen , or Orijen or Taste of the wild. t’here are others but I have fed these 3 so know they are good. I hope you find a food that is good for them and one that you like to feed. good luck If you want raw, go to Hare-Today they sell a mix of meat/bone/organs ground up ready to feed. It ships to you frozen and you thaw and feed. it is simple. I have fed that and still feed Hare today (the raw), with some of the Honest kitchen that has NO meat. The Honest Kitchen has many foods , with different protein sources like beef, chicken orturkey etc…IT is total food, and you have to decide how far you want to go with feeding good food to your pets. Good luck Once you start it will become easy, if you wait til you know everything about feeding raw, it will never happen. so start now.

“Best” is subjective. In my opinion it’s a matter of quality of ingredients and safety of manufacturing.

I’d say self-manufactured brands like Orijen and Acana now get the nod over other top brands like Taste of the Wild, Canidae, Wellness, Chicken Soup, etc. they make their own food in their own plants.

I still use TOTW and Canidae kibble though. If anything, I’ll bet Diamond is bending over backwards redoubling their efforts to keep that plant as copacetic as possible now.

I use it to supplement homemade Dr Pitcairn recipe natural food, primarily to try and hedge against any nutritional imbalances in the homemade food, even though Pitcairns recipes are designed to be balanced.

If they are picky, The brands of dry food aren’t going to do much difference. A lot of small dogs can be picky.
Keep them (or put them) on the best dry food you can afford, but then add a little bit of raw meat or a tiny bit of wet canned food to make it more appetising. Even wetting the dry food with a cracked egg in it might make it more appetising for them.
But don’t give dogs more than 2 whole eggs per week. If you give them egg whites only you can go up to 4 times.

Remember that you have to take out as much dry food out of their meal as you put in wet/meat. So they don’t get overweight.

EDIT: Raw food diets can be beneficial, but most people don’t get veterinary help sorting out a diet. As canine dietary needs are very different to ours (and even cats), a lot of dogs on raw diets don’t get their dietary needs which can make them quite ill. If you are thinking about doing raw food diet, always consult a vet (ESPECIALLY FOR A GROWING PUPPY).