Dry Dog Food Opinion

Par1

I was just reading a different post on dog foods and wondered a few things. Vets seem to recommend a particular brand of dry dog food then when asked they often say that they find the brands that they sell are the best.

I recently spoke to a vet who said that the ingredients in dog foods vary but the ones they recommend have the best quality ingredients. I questioned this (the vet was recommending Burns food). I asked the vet if he heard of Barking heads as pound for pound i taught Barking heads food ingredients were better. The vet replied 'never heard of it'. When i quizzed him on the ingredients he then said that the dog food industry is not regulated so how could i verify that barking heads brand actually put the ingredients in as they say?

My question, if this is the case then how can we trust any manufacturer to put the ingredients in that they say they do?

A good few years back i spoke with another vet and he simply said find which food your dog likes then stick to that.

As the food is all processed i would like to know if the food ingredients are actually there as im sure processing removes a lot of the 'good stuff'. I also wonder if the ingredient figures we see are actually 'pre' processing or 'post' processing values??

The quest shall go on.....i think its impossible to find the best kibble and who ever advertised the best wins in my opinion.

ferretone

Pretty nice job of summing up why so many of us on this forum no longer feed commercial dog foods, OP The answer is, absolutely there is a woeful lack of regulation in this industry, and also, whatever almost any vet I have come across does recommend, is without exception terribly high in carbs for dogs.

Burns is the best of that particular bunch: at least the carbs in that are brown rice or similarly harmless, but there are still way too much of them. The real problem with taking nutritional advice for your dog from vets is, they aren't really qualified to give it, but all their training leads them to believe they are. Training which, in the field of nutrition is almost exclusively given by processed dog food manufacturers.

To be fair, they've done a fantastic job of promoting this product for the manufacturers, while still believing they are doing the best for us and our dogs!

I remember when I was a kid, most people were still feeding the dogs table scraps, while we were being all modern, and great dog owners, as we thought, as we bought them the dry food from the vet, which he said was the very best, balanced diet for them.

Well, turns out the "balance" in this diet was based on humans, and on the barest minimum of protein that was healthy for them at that! Throw in the fact that it was basically waste food products that was going into all dogfood at that stage, and there is absolutely no doubt in my mind, that the dogs fed table scraps were doing a lot better than ours, despite all our concern and care! At least all their food had by definition to be fir for consumption, as it was leftovers of what they were eating themselves.

Sure, there are a number of processed foods available now, which are much closer to an appropriate diet for feeding dogs. But none of them are recommended by many vets here; there are a few available to buy here, and many more available online.

But I am a permanent convert to raw feeding now. I've seen it have such a brilliant effect on quite a few dogs who were struggling on anything else. Some others advocate home cooking, which is also a great option, if raw really doesn't suit the particular dog, or if you just prefer to do it that way

If you really do want to feed dry though, there are a number of brands that really are species appropriate. Examples include Taste of The Wild, Origen, Acana, Applaws, and several others. The simplest way to get them is generally zooplus.de (a bit cheaper than .ie or .co.uk). You can look at what is available in the dry dog food section there, but basically, you need to see that the first ingredients in the list are named meat products (not meat and meat derivatives, for example), and that there isn't any grain in it, or if there is, that it is only one, gluten-free grain, such as oats or rice, and that it is below 10% of the food if there is.