Dog food

[Bunker363]

What food are you feeding your dog. Anyone use Petcurean (go or now)or performatrin? Looking for a new food for my lab. Thanks!!

[FishOutOfWater]

Acana Classic Red

[artie]

My lab has a sensitive stomach and it does not take much to give him the squirts. I tried go for a while and then it started giving him the runs.
The one food I have good luck with is Acana lamb and okanagan apple. He likes it and will eat it with no other problems

[elkhunter11]

About half of our NAVHDA chapter is feeding their dogs Pro Plan Sport. I tried several foods, and ended up using the same for my dog.

[ruffy71]

I've got nothing against Acana, but they are right up there with the rest of them when it comes to advertising. And that's what dog food has become, a massive marketing effort to conceal the fact that all dog foods are much more alike then they are different.

Look at the ingredient list. Pure genius. "Steel cut oats" "Yorkshire pork" "Fresh liver"

Are steel cut oats more nutritious than non-steel cut oats? I don't know, I don't even know how many ways there are to cut oats, but it sure sounds good.

They try very hard to make it sound as if people drive little trucks to safeway every morning and pick out some carrots and a nice roast beef, drive back to the factory and grind it by hand to make one kibble at a time.

Nope, they don't. Do you know why the biggest companies use chicken so much? Because we have millions of spent laying hens that don't make it to the table. So they are ground up to make dog food. Which is as it should be.To waste all that protein would be immoral. Do we have studies that say pork is better for dogs than chicken? No. But it is different, and sounds "new" and that is what companies are going for. At the basic level, unless your dog is allergic to a particular type of protein, all these foods are made exactly the same way. All the vitamins and minerals added come from the same suppliers. The kibbling process is the same company to company.

If you want fresh 'table quality' protein for your dog, you have to go to safeway yourself. Otherwise you are getting trapped in the marketing mayhem that is dog food these days.

Put another way, if we lived in an alternate universe, where pork was the easiest protein and oats was the most common carboydrate, companies would be massively marketing their new amazing "chicken and corn diet"!

ps if you want to feed your dog this pork and beef diet, go ahead, it's just fine, just like diets made with turkey, or chicken, or salmon, or kangaroo, or alligator, or.....

[M.C. Gusto]

Pro Plan Sport. Good price, excellent product, and supports the hunting dog games.

[traderal]

Ruffys diatribe is entertaining but there is a difference between dog foods. The cheap ones are made with some kind of chicken parts including feathers and corn and maybe even sawdust. Why would I feed that to my dog? That would be like me eating McDonalds "food" day after day for life.
Our dogs fare best on Costco's Natures Domain and also Acana Classic Red. Origen was too rich. There are other brands just as good as Acana but they usually have less weight for the price. Pet Valu have great staff and have senior discount last Thursday of every month.

[ETOWNCANUCK]

Anything with Kirkland on the label.

Add in a tablespoon of virgin olive oil for the coat and shedding and your good.



Dogs will eat their own dropping’s, drink from the toilet and raid the cat box.
Plus other things we as pet parents may never see.
Yet we worry about what food we give them.

End of the day it’s like anything you would feed your children.

Common sense and within your budget.

[Okotok]

Carnivora raw beef and bison dinner which has vegetables mixed with the raw. A small chunk of frozen tripe with the morning feeding and a small cucumber with the evening one. Dog eats better than me! Small turds is an added benefit, plus the magpies like them and often fly away with them before I can pick them up.

[ruffy71]

And what did the ingredients look like when it got turned into your preferred dog food? Were you there, when the ingredients were backed up to the auger and fed into the production line? Did you have a mole with a hidden camera? Can you tell me which kibble was made with beaks a feathers, versus super nutritious chicken?

If anybody thinks their favorite company is using 'table grade' ingredients for their dog food, you are kidding yourselves. They use the bits we don't like, the carcasses too skinny for table fare. Nutritionally there is very little difference between meal and fresh, which is why the acana diet listed uses 43% lamb meal and only 5% fresh lamb, just so they can put the word "fresh" on the label 16 times.

Glad I could entertain you, and yes there is a difference in dog food quality. You need to stay away from the worst ones, but among the reputable companies with decent diets, the difference is nowhere near what the companies are trying to portray. Otherwise how could your dog do so well on Costco, and another dog does really well on Pro plan, and another dog does really well on blah blah blah diet? Dogs are omnivores and can digest chicken, and beef, and whatever. Which is also why the 'ol timers can chime in that dogs look great when they eat mice and calves' testicles.

Well which is it, they are robust animals that can digest about whatever they can fit in their mouths? Or if there isn't chickory root and blue berries in the diet your dog is doomed?

[DiabeticKripple]

Funny, I don’t think I have ever seen an Acana advertisement, but found out about them through this forum and how many guys are feeding it to their dogs with good success.

My pup is on Acana Large Breed Puppy, and I’m not sure where I’ll go after he’s grown. I was thinking either Kirkland or Pro Plan Sport

[ruffy71]

ooops 23% lamb meal. Not 43%. Lamb meal makes up approx 50% of the meat protein in the diet. Why would they pump in 50% of the meat protein as 'meal' if it is such ****. Terrible company.

Actually it's not, the diet is just fine.

[CritterCommander]

My pup did a full year on Acana Large breed puppy food and I now feed Acana Sport and Agility healthy happy dog that's all I want.

[troutbug]

Our dog seems to be healthy on the Kirkland brand dog food

[FCLightning]

Just found a good source for Eukanuba dog food so will be trying it out to see if the formula is as good to the dogs as it once was. If so, I will be switching. Has the good stuff in it - corn and chicken by-product - the tried and true fuel for performance dogs.

Before all the "feel good" marketing hype, Eukanuba was the quality food every other company was chasing - then some marketing genius figured out that fear mongering was a better option than chasing the tail of success.

[Fish along]

Not meaning to derail ,but what if you placed a sirloin steak beside your dogs favorite dog food which one would he eat first

[FCLightning]

Originally Posted by Fish along

Not meaning to derail ,but what if you placed a sirloin steak beside your dogs favorite dog food which one would he eat first

But if I placed a fresh cat dung beside the steak it would be a toss up.

[WhiteTailAB]

Carnivora raw.

[MoFugger21]

I'm sure there's "better" dog foods for our lab, but she likes it and our small, local pet store carries it so we can support them instead of having to buy something from the city.

[Ossie]

I have fed all of my hunting dogs over the years (goldens and labs) with Perfomatrim. We got in the habit of using this brand when we lived in Ottawa and raised and trained puppies for the Canadian Guide Dogs for the Blind (5 pups over 10 years). This was the food that they used as it was considered a a high quality low bulk dog food....which means good nutrition with less poop to deal with. My current golden is about 80 lbs and gets 1 cup in the morning and 1 cup in the evening (winter feeding). During hunting season he might get an additional 1/4 at each feeding.
If your dog continues to have "issues" you may want to consider deworming him each month other than when the frost is in the ground, I find that this is necessary for my dogs, heartworm during the bug season (which does the intestinal worms as well) and regular deworming between the bug season and the frost either goes in or comes out of the ground. Since I started this years ago, what I thought might be food issues...weren't and the "issues" all went away.

[Greatwest]

Where does a guy get this Acana brand dog food. I must say this is the first place I have seen or even heard of it.

[DiabeticKripple]

Originally Posted by Greatwest

Where does a guy get this Acana brand dog food. I must say this is the first place I have seen or even heard of it.

I know pet valu and petland carry it. Petsmart does not.

[Dewey Cox]

Whatever is on sale at peavey mart.

[traderal]

I would have to hate my dog to feed him Ol Roy from Peavey.

[troutbug]

Originally Posted by traderal

I would have to hate my dog to feed him Ol Roy from Peavey.

This....

Ol roy is walmart brand, I do not even buy meat from that store for my family let alone food for the dog

When we upgraded our dogs food to actual good quality stuff after I learned more about what is in it the pup sure changed for the better. His coat, body and weight all changed and looked so good. Poops smaller and not as often.

[CritterCommander]

I get my Acana at my local Co-op Bulk Station store. Have found it at Bone n Buiscuit, and I think I saw it at a Pet Smart a while ago.

[kingrat]

i feed horizon legacy to my lab and he does very well with it. its made in saskatchewan and i get a good deal from the father in law so that helps.

[chauncy]

Seen Acana at The Red Deer UFA as well.


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[rmatei]

I have had several generations of dogs on Acana since Champion started making it. The formulas have changed a little since Nestle bought them out. They get puppy formulas then on Acana Large Breed Adult. Absolutely no problems. Support the Alberta plant and buy Acana, as good as it gets.

[Ursus_Major]

I feed them with various Acana. They never had a food related health problem. They like them all except the blue on with fish - which stinks a lot, I can understand them