What is the best dog food?

Question

I have a 3 month old GSD and I want to know what is the best food for my pet? He is right now on Royal Canin as suggested by the Vet. Is home cooked food better than Commercial pet food? Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

NEVER feed a dog home cooked food, or any cooked food for that matter.  My opinion, and any answer you are going to get is strictly an opinion, is that Nutro brand dry food is best.  Nutro Max is cheaper, but the flavor is less desired by most dogs.  

Answer 2

Home Cooked can be better than commercial food.... however there is a LOT of room for error... and if you are just starting off with a puppy his age, I wouldn't recommend it. You have no room for error during development. For your GSD, I would recommend Innova, Wellness, Timberwolf Organics, Nature's Variety, Fromm, Solid Gold.... these are all great brands. However, you want to stay away from grain free and puppy foods as these can cause rapid growth and joint problem down the line.

Also, don't give into the "large breed" scam. You end up feeding more than you would a regular adult food and there really is no benefit to feeding "large breed".

Also, I am a firm believer in the Rotation Diet... which protein sources are rotated, daily, weekly, monthly... whatever you want to do.  

Answer 3

Merrick dog food is great...check it out!

Answer 4

Bentiful........Tx

Answer 5

Royal Canin is a low quality dog food.

Not all pet food is made equally. A lot of it is full of corn, by-products, dyes, unhealthy preservatives, filler grains and all sorts of nasty stuff. A lot of pet food companies are perfectly happy to dump cheap leftovers in. Will it kill your dog? No, it has to be nutritionally complete and safe to even be marketed. Is it healthy? Not by a long shot.

Corn is a low quality ingredient you never want to see in your pet food. Corn and low quality grains are two of the biggest culprits when it comes to food allergies in our pets.

Thankfully, there are some excellent dog foods being made these days that include organic, human grade ingredients rather than trash not fit for human consumption.

Examples of low quality foods to avoid: Anything you can find in a grocery store will be low end, Purina, Iams, Eukanuba, Science Diet, Royal Canin, Pedigree, Kibbles n' Bits, Beneful, Ol'Roy.

Examples of high quality foods to look for: Innova, Wellness, Solid Gold, Canidae All Life Stages, Fromm Four Star, Merrick, GO Natural, Nature's Variety Prairie, Nature's Logic, Artemis Fresh Mix.

Although the high quality foods are more expensive, you're getting what you're paying for. Less filler material means more concentrated nutrients... this means you typically need to feed far less of the high quality food than you would of the low quality one. Which also means less p**p!

A great option is to go with an entirely grainless diet. Many of the high quality foods now put out grainless formulas. Some good grainless diets include: Innova EVO, Wellness CORE, Blue Wilderness, Nature's Variety Instinct, Orijen, Horizon Legacy, Merrick Before Grain, Canidae Grain Free All Life Stages, Fromm Surf & Turf, Now! and Sold Gold Barking At The Moon, Taste of the Wild.

Some pretty decent foods can even be found in common pet stores. Petsmart carries Blue Buffalo products (such as the excellent grain free diet Blue Wilderness). Petco carries Wellness, Solid Gold, Natural Balance, Eagle Pack Holistic, Blue Buffalo, Castor & Pollux Organix, Pinnacle, and Halo. If you can't find a food, most of the high quality food brands have websites with store locators on them.

Remember that foods should be switched gradually, especially when switching to a higher quality one, so as not to upset tummies.

Another option for feeding dogs is to feed raw. This is something that should be thoroughly researched before being attempted:

http://www.barfworld.com/

http://www.rawfed.com/

http://www.rawlearning.com/

http://www.wysong.net/controversies/rawm...

More on dog food:

http://www.dogfoodproject.com/index.php?...  (Learn how to determine the quality of your dog's food.)

http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/dog_food_... (Dog food reviews. Four stars is a decent food, five stars is a great food, and six stars is an excellent food.)

Answer 6

Kibbles there good for dogs.

Answer 7

First of all you want to look at a dog food label and NOT see ANY corn, wheat, soy, gleutens or by products of any kind.  These are horrible ingredients and not good for your dog and can cause major allergies in a year or so.  There are many good foods out there, some are Wellness (Just for Puppy) would be the one you want for your 3 month old.  You can get it at Petco and at other pet feed stores.  Other great foods are Solid Gold, Orijen, Innova, Merrick, Eagle Pack Holistic, Taste of the Wild, Timber wolf and Blue Buffalo.  Stay away from any food from a grocery store or Walmart.  Also stay away from Hill's Science Diet(look at the label, all corn stuff), it's high priced corn meal.  Other bad ones are Iams and Eukanuba which are high priced too. I've had my dog almost a year and have really researched this and he eats Wellness adult and small breed adult mixed.  Petco is the store that sells most of the good foods.  Another good food you'll hear about is Canidae All Life Stages.  BUT, that food has just changed it's formula and didn't tell their customers by putting anything on the label saying that it was a new formula so I don't trust them anymore.  It's still good food but might be too rich for some and it has "diversified carbs" in it which is just a fancy way of saying that they lowered their standards.  Nutro has 3 different stages of food.  Their MAX formula is no good as is the Natual Choice.  If you find that you want to feed the Nutro brand, the best one is Nutro Ultra Holistic.  Nutro had big problems during the dog food recalls so I wouldn't trust them either.  You are being very smart for wanting  a quality food for your dog.  It will avert alot of problems and vet bills to just feed a good diet with no corn or junk in it.  Good Luck!

Answer 8

If you don't want to feed kibble and are willing to take the time to research and prepared a home-cooked diet, I would just go all the way to a raw diet.

http://www.dogster.com/forums/Raw_Food_D...

As far as kibble goes, here are some good puppy-appropriate foods

* Canidae all-life-stages

* Wellness Just for Puppy

* Artemis Fresh Mix puppy

* Innova puppy

* Chicken Soup for the Puppy Lover's Soul

* Merrick Turducken, Merrick Wildnerness Blend

(more brands further down in this answer)

There is no food that is the *best*, different individual dog may thrive on different foods. What you want to find is the HIGH-QUALITY food that *your dog* does best on.

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Read the ingredients before you buy.

Here is my "short list" of rules when I am looking at dog food ingredients:

1) When I chose a dog food, I chose one high meat content. I want to see preferably at least 2-3 out of the top 5 ingredients be meat or meat meal (first ingredient must be!). Meal is simply the meat with the moisture removed.

2) I want to see higher quality grains, such as barley, brown rice, and oatmeal, instead of seeing wheat and corn. Or an alternative starch/carbohydrate such as potatoes or sweet potatoes.

3) I don't want to see any byproducts.

4) I don't want to see a lot of fillers.

5) I don't want to see preservatives that are believed to be carcinogens (BHA, BHT, ethoxyquin).

6) I don't want to see artificial colorings such as the Red, Blue, and Yellow dyes.

7) I don't want to see added sugars (sugar, corn syrup).

8) I don't want to see mystery meats (meats identified only as "meat" or "poultry".)

Here is an article about byproducts:

http://www.dogfoodproject.com/index.php?...

And an article on what ingredients to avoid:

http://www.dogfoodproject.com/index.php?...

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Here are some examples of GOOD dog foods:

* Artemis Fresh Mix

* Blue Buffalo

* California Natural

* Canidae

* Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover's Soul

* Eagle Pack Holistic Selects

* EVO

* Fromm Four Star

* Innova

* Merrick

* Nature's Variety

* Orijen

* Solid Gold

* Taste of the Wild

* Wellness

* ZiwiPeak

Or check this website; the 4, 5, or 6 star rated foods are all good foods. http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/dog_food_...

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Higher quality food may seem more expensive at first, but it evens out. The higher quality the food, the less fillers eaten (and therefore the less p**p comes out the other end). Your dog eats more of a low-quality food to try to get the nutrition it needs, and most of the food just passes right on through. Also, higher-quality food will make your animals healthier, so you save money on vet bills in the long run.

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What *NOT* to buy:

Stay away from grocery stores brands. They are low-quality foods chalk full of fillers, preservatives, dyes, etc.. (Grocery store foods are those like Beneful, Kibbles n Bits, Old Roy, Alpo, Pedigree, Purina, etc.)

Beware "premium" foods. "Premium" does not always mean high quality food. Most of these foods have the same types of ingredients as grocery store foods, just a bit better quality of those not-so-good ingredients. (Premium foods are those like Iams, Eukanuba, Science Diet, Bil-Jac, Royal Canin, etc..)

Another thing to be wary of: A lot of vets will recommend what they sell in their office. They get profit from the brands they keep on their shelves, that's why they push it. Truth is, vet schools don't focus a lot on nutrition. It's not saying that a vet is a bad vet because he recommends those foods, a lot of vets just are told "this is good food", so they pass the message along without proper nutrition knowledge. Also, some dog food brands (like Hills) support vet schools, so vets have heard of it from the time they start college, which makes them think it's good as well.

Hills company, the makers of Science Diet, are heavily involved in vet schools. "Hill's scientists author more than 50 research papers and textbook chapters each year and teach at leading schools of veterinary medicine" (Source of quoted section: http://www.hillsvet.com/zSkin_2/company_... )

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"Big box" petstores like Petco and Petsmart rarely have quality foods. (There are some higher quality foods at those locations, but most of the foods aren't.)

Also, grocery stores and Walmart aren't good places to buy food either.

Your best bets for getting quality dog food are:

- small, locally owned petstores

- dog boutiques

- farm supply stores

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When switching foods, do it gradually. I do this over about a two week timespan:

1/4 food A, 3/4 food B

1/2 food A, 1/2 food B

3/4 food A, 1/4 food B

all food A

.

Answer 9

DO NOT BUY IAMS!!!

it was reported taht dogs got sick off of it and that there are real dog parts in there ( not sure if THATS true0 but i did a report and its still true that they do animal testing on dogs before the product is sold

theres this really healthy brand that my dog doesn't really like it but he still eats it. thena  ain dogs will eat anything so go for whatever