Is all dog food bad? What the heck do I feed my dogs then?!?

[SleepyOwl]

Another positive about a raw diet for dogs and cats.... way less poop! It is also smaller and drier, so much easier to clean up. The cat boxes need a lot less cleaning, too! They are able to digest so much more of what they are eating, so there just isn't as much coming out.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

A person can end up in the kooky end of the Internet very easily if one begins searching info on how to feed dogs and cats. Animal feeds aren't regulated in the same way as human foods are, so getting reliable information about commercial pet foods isn't that easy.

Marion Nestle, author of a Food Politics blog, wrote a book titled "Feed Your Pet Right" in which she and her co-author describe the science of pet nutrition and survey the pet food industry. They pretty much describe all commercial pet foods to be "healthy" for your pet and explain the different prices as being based on marketing, not quality. Nestle wrote another book titled "Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine" about pet food recalls. In the Feed Your Pet Right book she gives some recipes for making your own pet foods at home. If you choose to make your own pet food, getting the nutrition right is important. This isn't a bad place to start if you want reliable answers to your pet food questions.

Otherwise, there are plenty of Internet sites that monitor and rate commercial pet foods. Each seems to have its own agenda (for example, some insist only "muscle meat" and no byproducts should be in the food, which sounds tasty to us humans, but some important-to-your-pet nutrients can be found in the less-apetizing parts of the animal, so ... ???). In my experience, my pets' taste-buds don't seem to correspond with the ratings. Getting my pets to eat at all is pretty important to me, so I do take their preferences into consideration.

It is true that there are lots of very passionate people describing special pet diets all over the internet and they can be aggressive, dispensing their advice with a large serving of guilt. If you encounter these, look for some sound science to back up their claims before you get sucked into their cult. I found a lot of "it is common sense that feral/wild dogs/cats eat x, so that's what you should feed your pet" type claims, which are only backed up with more "obvious" "observations" and endless amounts of emphatic but circular prose, and zero recommendations to give your cats live birds and mice (for example) ... included with these are the "ethical" arguments in favor of vegetarian/vegan diets for pets ... but this is not necessarily science. I remember reading one blog by a vegan who fed her new kitten only off of her own plate ... of course her cat died of malnutrition soon enough, and she did post about feeling "guilty", but she also considered herself worthy of another try with another cat. Sigh.

I also ran into some very, very annoying marketing when shopping for pet foods at pet super store chains. There are people haunting the sales floors of these stores who work for pet food companies and will try any tactic to get you to buy their brand of pet food and just won't leave you alone until you put some of their food into your cart ... I have been offered a lot of misinformation by these marketers (like that canola is a corn product). They all promise smaller, drier, less smelly poop if your pet is fed their product. Now I refuse to shop at stores that allow this kind of un-informed yet high-pressure marketing.

What do I do? I still buy a highly-rated and more expensive commercial pet food brand at the local feed store. And my pets eat it happily enough and are all healthy. Maybe some day I'll start making my own pet foods at home ...

 

[badkittyamy]

My dogs are fat and happy eating purina. I see no reason to change. I've seen dogs 15 years old eating ol Roy. My oldest is 10 and a friend stopped by and his buddy couldn't believe her age for how active and healthy she was.

And she would have been much healthier on not terrible food, seriously this reply is pretty ridiculous.

You can also smoke cigarettes and never get cancer but that doesn't mean it's a HEALTHY or WISE choice. You can also feed your kids mcdonalds every day and they may well live into their 80's but would you? Purina is a uh whatever if you don't have the money choice. I understand not everyone can afford canidae, not that there aren't generally better choices for the money than purina but whatever) Ol Roy though, there is no excuse to feed ol roy EVER. The cost for ol roy versus what your dog is getting from it negates once you actually switch to a better food because you feed less. You may as well just feed your dog molasses and corn if you chose to feed ol roy.

 

[Fly 2006]

And she would have been much healthier on not terrible food, seriously this reply is pretty ridiculous.

You can also smoke cigarettes and never get cancer but that doesn't mean it's a HEALTHY or WISE choice. You can also feed your kids mcdonalds every day and they may well live into their 80's but would you? Purina is a uh whatever if you don't have the money choice. I understand not everyone can afford canidae, not that there aren't generally better choices for the money than purina but whatever) Ol Roy though, there is no excuse to feed ol roy EVER. The cost for ol roy versus what your dog is getting from it negates once you actually switch to a better food because you feed less. You may as well just feed your dog molasses and corn if you chose to feed ol roy.

Please can someone tell me what " Ol Roy " is, just curious

 

[cmknight]

I feed my dog Blue Buffalo. He loves it and is very healthy. I think vegans should be turned into dog food.

 

[Fly 2006]

Please can someone tell me what " Ol Roy " is, just curious

OMG, just looked it up, YUK, I wouldn't have a dog if I had to feed it this disgusting stuff!!

 

[cmknight]

And she would have been much healthier on not terrible food, seriously this reply is pretty ridiculous.

You can also smoke cigarettes and never get cancer but that doesn't mean it's a HEALTHY or WISE choice. You can also feed your kids mcdonalds every day and they may well live into their 80's but would you? Purina is a uh whatever if you don't have the money choice. I understand not everyone can afford canidae, not that there aren't generally better choices for the money than purina but whatever) Ol Roy though, there is no excuse to feed ol roy EVER. The cost for ol roy versus what your dog is getting from it negates once you actually switch to a better food because you feed less. You may as well just feed your dog molasses and corn if you chose to feed ol roy.

I whole heartedly agree. People who feed Ol' Roy to there pets should have their pets taken away. I have heard that there were studies that showed that Ol' Roy has caused kidney damage in dogs. I don't know if that it true, but it makes me not touch it. The first ingredient should be saw dust for as cheap as it is.

 

[naturalfeddogs]

Please can someone tell me what " Ol Roy " is, just curious

Ol Roy is crap kibble sold by Walmart.

 

[Moochie]

Ah I see. The ground up skunks/vermin and slaughterhouse wastes scared me for a moment. Eh.. So at a butcher store or slaughterhouse where an animal has been freshly chopped up, does the butcher sell/use every part of the animal or will he throw something away? I ask because I'm looking for healthy alternatives to commercial dog treats... Or just something for em' to chew on. If I buy the hooves from a cow will my dogs take them gladly or will I need to cook them first? What parts of a cow [or any animal] is the best for a dog?
I've heard of giving chicken feet to dogs but we try not to give any chicken products to ours... The other day I found the dachshunds literally eating a chicken alive, it must flown over the fence or something, but I found it with it's back/rump raw and chewed up, and it's shoulder chewed up. It was breathing still so I just put it out of it's misery as quickly and as humanely as I could. Why didn't my dogs just kill it? That's so cruel... To make it go through that.. I came back from shopping with mom and cousin and I saw it running away from my dogs.. I don't understand how they could just let it live while they torture it :/ It was one of the scariest things I've ever seen, I cried a bit too.
Some other bad news has come up too, one of my doxies, Lucky, has some kind of stone growing in his saliva gland that needs to be removed. I thought it was cancer but the vet said that it's rock hard, kind of moves too, and she's never seen anything like it. They're doing blood work to make sure it's not cancer and to make sure he'll be okay to be sedated. I've never heard of a stone growing in the saliva gland. Calcium build up?

 

[punk-a-doodle]

NOTE: I do not mean to single any one person out with this reply. These sorts of notions (ie. poor people shouldn't own animals, people who feed xyz shouldn't own animals, breeders who don't perform every genetic test possible are irresponsible and shouldn't be allowed animals, etc) are deeply disturbing ideas to me personally, but seem to be more cultural (and really along sharp economic divides at that) than individual.


I fed my ACD Old Roy lamb and rice when we were going through a particularly tough financial spot. Lamb meal, then rice are the first two ingredients, which ended up actually being better than the first ingredients on her previously fed, more expensive food (chicken meal, yellow corn). She had better energy and poops on Old Roy lamb and rice compared to previously fed brands (and actually, she more recently did terribly on one of the expensive, grain-free foods..Taste of the Wild). I certainly wouldn't have appreciated someone telling me I have to hand over a then five year-old shelter dog who was adopted at age three and took years of intensive work to get her over several serious issues, and had bonded extremely closely to us and we to her because...we had to feed her comprably to how we ourselves had to eat at the time. We give our dog lots of exercise, training, affection, and stimulation. I have known plenty of people who keep their dog locked in crates designed to look like furniture and who pay for other people to interact with their animals. They did feed them expensive food though. Is food a good indicator of overall affection and husbandry in our society? Who would have actually taken our dog if she was to be removed from us for being fed Old Roy? She was due for euthanasia at the shelter...but maybe death would have been better than food of an inferior quality?

Not long after that was one of the larger dog food recalls. Expensive, even organic, foods were on that list. People who had previously declared on forums that, "not feeding your dogs these brands is animal cruelty"...were strangely silent after that.

I do hope to one day feed my animals (pets and meat animals) home-raised and prepared food, and I think if you are able to do that, that is just awesome. I'm not cool with maligning people based on economic realities and limitations.