What's your favorite dog food? - Page 4

Blitzen:  so are you feeding raw fish or do you poach?  Was always a bit leary of raw fish.  Go figure and I also use ground turkey/ground beef, etc from local grocery stores.  However one fairly local holistic veterinarian told me to be careful with feeding any types of grocery store meats as they were not necessarily checked for various pathogens but was suggesting that Natures Varieties raw was and was also selling it at the vet clinic, so told her at that time I had been using K9 Kravings but my sammie boy was taken off chicken products as a precaution and currently was feeding Orijen 6 fish.  Blah Blah Blah...  I think Stoney (sammie) boy is definitely on the road to recovery as I did have the growths (2) taken off recently and all is healed up beautifully.  Now if I can get Hot Rod's (GSD) aka "Roddy" gut cleaned up I am on the road to recovery...  Maybe give him a shot of Tequilla once in a while will kill anything...

Hey, thank you for all your help, really, really appreciate it.  Happy Easter...  Nan

I don't feed raw fish or raw ground meat of any kind. I don' t know about super market meat, I don't hesitate to feed Bev what I eat. I think some vets take it too far. Read Dodd's book, I think it will answer a lot of your questions. Everyone has their own way of feeding their dog/s it seems.

I may be right behind ya on not feeding anything raw also, we will see how it goes with current plan.  Thx again for info,  appreciate.  Nan

Nan, I would give really good probiotics or even enzymes and probiotics together and give the 6 fish another try with the guy who used to get the squirts. I would do that with any dog who was on abx, but especially if he may have had an underlying tummy trouble. 

I like Orijen too. Switched my girls over to it last year and they've done great - particularly the cat. I was excited to try Qira on the new Tundra(?) version of it when it made it to my favorite pet store, until they told me it was going to be around $110 a bag and my wallet started weeping. Hopefully once they open up the new plant in Kentucky the prices will be a bit lower... but that's probably just wishful thinking.

Well that still makes it cheaper than a vet trip which showed me 0, but I did get Metro for approx $120.00.  Soooooo, thats that... 

Yes Jen, I am thinking I may try it again, would like to think that this boy had Cocci or Giardia or ??  Sure after one dose of Metro cleared up, somewhat, but still did take a couple of doses to be somewhat consistent??  Am looking for enzyme+probiotics combo right now.  Any suggestions greatly appreciated.  When you go on search on this forum you only can come up with 2011 being most current.??  Not sure about that but that is old news for me.  Thx again,  to all,  Nan

I've been using OptiPro Complete, Nan. It has 6.8 billion CFU. It also has a wider enzyme profile than most products. Now, I don't have any "problem" dogs I can really do a "before and after" comparison, but I kind of think (placebo maybe, lol) that a couple seems shinier and like they're keeping weight on better, but both are dogs I haven't had all that long, so it could be the change in environment, better food in general, etc. etc. Nonetheless, I did a lot of research and this one seems like the most bang for the buck. I think I got it on Chewy.com. http://www.chewy.com/s?dept=all&query=optipro+complete&nav-submit-button=Submit

$110 a bag for dog food? What size bag? 100 lbs?

LOL. 'Fraid not. I would think it's a 28.6lb bag, like all other Orijen big bags. 6 fish is in the upper 80's, low 90's in stores around here. I got an amazing deal on it on ebay and bought all I could at once, paid about $50/bag for it. Regional Red is also very high. 

That's an insane price. I think one could make the food using fresh ingredients for less than that.  I buy The Honest Kitchen Force  via PetFlow auto ship for $79.13 free shipping for a 10 lb box that makes 40 lbs of food. I thought that was expensive. Origen products are ridiculous. Most I know with multiple dogs can't afford to feed the designer foods and many have gone with the Costo product, I forget the name. They claim their dogs do just as well or better on that as they did Orijen and some of the other high end food at half the cost. I used to pay $25 for 50 lbs of a corn based locally milled kibble. Never lost one dog younger that 12 and most never saw the vet for being sick.  That was when puppies were weaned on Purina Puppy Chow and my longest lived dog - 26 years- ate nothing but Gaines Burgers. I don't honestly know if dogs really needs all this or if we are the victims of the greatest marketing scheme to ever  hit the dog world .