Puppy Food Recommendations

Hi, la4ce!

Congratulations on your two new companions!

When you changed from Iams to Purina, did you do it gradually, starting by mixing a bit of Purina in with the Iams, increasing the Purina portion each feeding? Many dogs will have digestive problems with a sudden change in diet.

I gather you don't know what the dogs were eating before you adopted them. That is usually the best food to start out with.

My understanding is that dogs cannot digest corn, so a dog food with corn as the first ingredient is not good. Try to get a dog food with meat as the first ingredient. If you want to stay with Purina, they have many different lines of dog food, so you should be able to find one with less corn. Whatever food you decide on, decide on it based on how good it is for your dogs. Although your dogs may say they don't care for the taste, they'll learn to like whatever they are fed. No dog has been known to starve to death because he didn't like the flavor of his food! Just put down their dishes in the morning and the evening; then remove them 20 minutes later regardless of how much they have eaten. They may skip a day or so -- then they'll decide the food is delicious.

As for amount: start with the suggested amount on the back of the package and adjust as you watch the dogs. If they start to put on weight, reduce their food; if their ribs begin to show, increase the food. How much they need is going to depend on their individual metabolisms and how much exercise they get.

Good wishes for you and your two,
kjd

Well, crazycrayonmom,

Your mention of a dog food I never heard of sent me off on a search and I found this web site: [url=http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/]Dog Food Analysis - Reviews of kibble[/url]. If I am to trust the reviews, all with only one review, you and I have been using 3-star foods for our dogs. I am going to look into the 6-star ones.

OTOH, it looks as if all Purina's foods rate only one-star and a friend whose husband is a vet said they feed all their dogs Purina. Go figure!

kjd

Great! Let us hear what you find out.

FWIW, I have heard about corn being useless for at least 20 years -- and it is still in dog food! I'd never known wheat was a problem until the vet behavioralist I hired to help Zoey told me it, and all its relatives, caused problems for many dogs. Dogs' cousins eat the stomachs of their kill, so they are used to some grains. Corn, OTOH, being a special development of man, may not ever appear in a wild herbivore's stomach. Wheat is now a known allergen for people.

kjd

Same thing with me la4ce. I learned a long time ago that corn was not good for dogs, but it is hard to find one in the grocery store that is not filled with corn. In fact, when my dogs started getting a bit heavy, I would put them on Fit & Trim look at it, you don't see any meat until the 7th ingredient! No wonder the dogs lost weight they weren't getting any food!

I think Sunna researches the price of food when I'm not around. She goes for the most expensive she can find! She also likes variety. She gobbled up EVO for the first few days, then said it wasn't worth much. I've been being careful to keep it sealed so it stays fresh. Fortunately, she doesn't seem to have a delicate stomach as I will have to rotate the food every couple of days.

Sunna counter-surfed once and I began making sure food was out of her reach. Zoey learned the hard way that counter-surfing was unproductive. I'd fixed a mixture of cottage cheese and blueberries, both popular with her. When my back was turned, she knocked it on the floor. Now, everyone knows it is a univeral law that food on the floor belongs to the dog. I made her sit outside the kitchen while I cleaned it all up and threw it in the trash. She learned the second part of that law: if the dog knocks it on the floor it isn't on the floor. She never counter-surfed again and she loved everything but lemons and limes! She didn't even steal things out of the trash.