What kind of food do you guys feed your dogs????

[Hobbit]

I feed "Diamond", Lamb and Rice.

[Carolk9s]

Well I do want to feed my pack a decent food, I also want it to be affordable and available locally. I also would like to be able to feed both of the older dogs the same food, having 3 dogs I do not want to have 3 different types of food to juggle. I do not want to do BARF, I do not want the food to have to be shipped to me and I'd like to keep in the range of no more than a dollar a pound. Heck I think they already eat better than I do anyway.
A local belgian breeder has been feeding Wayne Dog Food for decades, many of her dogs hold multiple titles in varied fields, her dogs have huge amounts of energy and they live well into their mid teens which is pretty good for belgians. Her Midas was just shy of his 16th birthday when he died. Wayne's second ingredient listed is ground yellow corn.
It can be very confusing, our old mutt we had has kids lived to be 15 and he was fed plain old Purina Dog Chow.

[Hobbit]

[quote name='Carolk9s']Well I do want to feed my pack a decent food, I also want it to be affordable and available locally. I also would like to be able to feed both of the older dogs the same food, having 3 dogs I do not want to have 3 different types of food to juggle. I do not want to do BARF, I do not want the food to have to be shipped to me and I'd like to keep in the range of no more than a dollar a pound. Heck I think they already eat better than I do anyway.
A local belgian breeder has been feeding Wayne Dog Food for decades, many of her dogs hold multiple titles in varied fields, her dogs have huge amounts of energy and they live well into their mid teens which is pretty good for belgians. Her Midas was just shy of his 16th birthday when he died. Wayne's second ingredient listed is ground yellow corn.
It can be very confusing, our old mutt we had has kids lived to be 15 and he was fed plain old Purina Dog Chow.[/quote]


The main concern with corn is the Vomitoxins (Aflatoxins) that can develope on the corn during humid/wet weather.

This is a pretty good website: [url]http://www.api4animals.org/doc.asp?ID=79[/url]

This is one is good also, it talks about 25 dogs that died from dog food tainted with Aflatoxin: [url]http://agnews.tamu.edu/dailynews/stories/VETM/Nov0498a.htm[/url]

[url]http://www.husky-petlove.com/dogfood2.html[/url]

[url]http://stormkloud.com/API/body_api.html[/url]

[url]http://www.isco.purdue.edu/mycotoxins.htm[/url]

[url]http://www.fila.org/peak/dirtydogs.htm[/url]

[Aroura]

See, THAT is why my number one choice of food when I can afford it is BARF!!!!
I know exactly whats in it and can monitor what they eat. Also because they look healthyer than ever when they're on it! No need for grains, carbohydrates etc, as dogs convert fat into carbohydrate. The only reason pet food companys use any form of grain, no matter how 'good' they say the particular grain is, is as a filler, not because it benefits the dog in any way. This has been proven to me by the abundance of energy in my dogs after feeding a 100% grain free diet for a few weeks, and they had more energy than when they were on dog food!
Carol, the fish meal would have been added for vitamin A and other minerals fish provide and the vitamin E is added as a preservative, rather than ethoxyquin.

[Dad4duchess]

I feed Duchess Large Breed Eukanuba (dad pays for it) :P . I don't notice any diference in her breath from when we were using Pedigree :lol:

[Gordonmom]

Here is a wesite for those of you who are interested in de-cyphering what is in your dog food!

[url]http://home.hawaii.rr.com/wolfepack/foodcht1.html[/url]

[Horsefeathers!]

And if anyone is interested in the US government's (FDA) report on sodium pentobarbital (yes, the drug used in euthanasia) in commercial dog foods, you can check it out at [url]http://www.fda.gov/cvm/efoi/DFreport.doc[/url]

This opens as a Word document for me, so if anyone has problems reading it, I'll start another thread and post it there. It's very long, but it gives the names of commercial dog foods tested and found to contain sodium pentobarbital. It is somewhat open to scrutiny meaning that the FDA, though it has determined that some foods do indeed contain SP, doesn't believe the amounts are significant enough to be detrimental. Other independent vets, however, believe that it can be accumulated in fat and liver cells and could very well lead to problems down the road. Since there are no longterm studies supporting the government's "harmless" claim, I'm of a mind to want to avoid the drug in my dogs' food altogether. Also, there was no way to regulate the amounts of the drug found in these foods. Some batches contained significantly higher/lower amounts than other batches of the same food, so there is really no way to determine a "safe" amount of SP.

Anyway, check it out. Is your dog's food on the list?

[bk_blue]

Horsefeathers, if you could post the link again that'd be great. I tried to open it and my computer crashed on me! (I think it has PMS tonight though :roll: )

[Horsefeathers!]

Oh my... I'll post it one more time and if it's going to cause problems, I'll just start another thread and paste the entire text there. Someone else said they'd had problems once opening this. On my computer, it opens as a Word document. :oops: [url]http://www.fda.gov/cvm/efoi/DFreport.doc[/url]

[bk_blue]

OK, opened it this time- thanks Horsefeathers.
I'm kind of wishing I didn't though :o
Where is the list of dog food?
I am thinking more about swapping over to BARF, the more I read about nasty commerical dog food!

[Horsefeathers!]

Go to the bottom of that page and click on "appendix." Then there will be even MORE reading (yay) and at the bottom of THAT page you will click on "Dog Food Survey Results." That's where the brand names are.

[Guest Anonymous]

Some super premium dog food brands are; Canidae, Wellness, Solid Gold, Innova.

Compare their ingredients lists with that of Eukanuba, Science Diet, Iams, Purina etc.

You don't need to be that knowledgeable to figure out which is better, I'm certainly no nutrition expert, but it's pretty clear when you take a look. I was originally feeding Euk. because I thought that was the best. I now feed Wellness, and could not be more pleased.

A number of health related concerns due to feeding poor quality food don't necessarily show up until the dog is much older. So it may certainly appear that a dog is doing really well on a substandard food. And, many many vets don't recognize health issues as being related to food, even though they certainly can be; urinary tract infections, allergies, hot spots, etc. etc. are treated as individual phenomenoms, when they could be caused by a sub-standard diet.

Also, don't let the price tag on those premium foods throw you; the nurition is far more concentrated and I feed almost half of what I would of "store brands". Less to pick up in the yard too :wink:

Ever wonder why, before dog food even existed or was very popular, that so many dogs lived to be well over 10 years old? They got table scraps :D