Wednesday, September 9, 2009

The Dish on Dog Food

I am truly sorry if my post about dog food last week offended anyone; I wasn't trying to say that there is only one way to feed your dogs. Most readers of this blog are dog lovers and I'm sure we all do the best we can for our fur kids. Here is the story of the evolution of our dogs' diet:

For years I fed my Siberian Husky, Scarlett, Science Diet ID (prescription food for intestinal disorders). Scarlett had pancreatitis and this was the food that was supposed to make her feel better. Instead she continued to have disabling attacks about every 2 weeks. This food was costing me about $60/bag... definitely not a "cheap" food. I started doing a lot of research and found source after source stating that some dogs have difficulty processing wheat, corn and soy. I looked at the ingredients list on the Science Diet and found that the first ingredient was corn, so I thought it was time to try a different food to see if we could get Scarlett some relief.

I first heard about Canidae from Katie's breeders and decided to give it a try for our new puppy Katie and our 13 year old girl Scarlett. The Canidae agreed with them both and Scarlett's pancreatitis attacks went from every 2 weeks to every 8 weeks. I was so happy that my baby was almost free from this illness. Scarlett lived a happy life until she was over 15 years old. When Canidae changed their formula the food began making a lot of dogs sick, so I used the website dog food analysis as a starting point to evaluate our dog food options. I chose Orijen partially because it received the highest rating on this site, but also because so many of our Newfie friends have used it with enormous success for years. I read post after post on newf.net about dogs with various digestive disorders and skin problems that miraculously went away when their owners switched to Orijen. Since Louie was having some itchy skin problems I was hoping it would help him, and it did :-)

What we choose to feed our pets is a very personal decision. The main point of this post is not to change anyone's mind about what kind of dog food they buy, but instead to provide a source of information to those who are interested in digging deeper into this topic.

3 comments:

JacksDad said...

I thought it was a very good blogpost. It seemed to me that you were sharing information, which is almost always a good thing!

Lauren@ Not Your Average Southern Belle said...

We LOVED your post on food -- it came at the perfect time for us. Pressley was so itchy! Can you forward your next coupon to us at bschinker@ddfconsulting.com or leellis@ualr.edu?

We are going to use Dog Food Analysis to determine a good food for our picky baby doberman as well... She does NOT enjoy the fish as much as Pressley does :)

Charity, Katie, Louie & Natalie said...

Thanks guys :-) I received quite a few positive emails and comments about that other post, but I received one response saying my previous post was offensive. Someone thought I was saying that grain free is the only way to feed and that if you don't do that you must not care about your dog. That, of course, was not the intention of my lighthearted post written from the perspective of Katie the constantly hungry Newf. Since the offended reader is someone I dearly care about I took her concern to heart. That was what prompted me to write this apology/explaination.