Feeding Penny

[Sally M]

OK, I'll come out and say it. We are not affluent people and--quite frankly--we cannot afford some of these expensive brands of dog food. Furthermore, we cannot drive across town to buy certain brands like Acana and/or Orijen. You have pages and pages of talk about dog food. I don't have the time to read all that (besides, a lot of it goes back several years and is kinda out-of-date, I would think). And what I do read, is confusing. So this is my question: Are there any GOOD dog foods that are REASONABLY priced and ones that are CONVENIENT to purchase (like, at Petco or PetSmart)? We have had dogs all our lives. And do I dare say it? We have fed them "grocery store brands" and they all lived normal and long lives. Did we just luck out that way? But now that I'm doing research on dog food, I'm reading scary info about such brands. So now I'm confused and scared.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

The short answer is that years ago, there was no free-trade agreement, most grocery store food brands were not owned by multinational corporations whose main interest was the shareholder profits, companies did not order their ingredients through third-party brokers, and nothing in your dog's food was from China. There may have been chicken beaks and entrails in there, but there wasn't any chemical melamine from China disguised as rice gluten. We've worked hard to provide a lot of information here that addresses your questions and concerns, but since you don;t have time to read it, I'm sure you can understand that I don;t have time to reproduce all of it or sum all of it up here, lol. I will do my best.

Regarding the "expensive" brands of dog food, we have cost comparisons here that show you that they are often actually much cheaper than the grocery store brands because they are nutrient dense, not full of garbage, so you feed less. if you go through 2 bags of Purina for every one bag of a better brand, there may not be any savings there. I'd also rather pay the money for nutritious food than for vet bills.

If you look at the store locators for the brands we recommend, you will find that there are often small stores near you that carry these brands that you may not even know exist. Yard and Garden stores, often. These stores also often sell the products for less than the big box stores. Worth checking it out.

Many people also order their food through online sites like chewy.com, which deeply discounts most of the foods and also has free shipping available.

But many of our brands are carried at Petco and Petsmart. Petco has a pretty good selection of our recommended brands, in fact. I often buy Jack's Wellness there. 

[Sally M]

Thank you Karen. I understand you don't have time to sum up everything for me. I didn't mean for you to have to try to do that. Just thought something would strike you, off the top of your head...regarding a good food that is reasonably priced. Thanks for the info. I'll keep looking around.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Honestly, I don't know which formulas in which brands are less expensive than others. I know that within the same brand, grain-free foods are usually priced higher than those with grains (but you also generally feed less) and the salmon based formula is usually priced higher than chicken based formula in the same line. But I can't say that Wellness costs more or less than Fromm because it depends on which two formulas  in which two Wellness or Fromm lines you are comparing. I think you might start by seeing which are available in your area, and then do a little comparison pricing at an online site like chewy.com. They carry most of the brands we recommend, and list the retail prices, so it's a good tool even if you don;t order through them. Then check the feeding amounts on the ones that seem reasonably priced to you and are also available nearby, because as I said, the feeding amounts make a huge difference in the overall cost. 

Once you have it narrowed down to a few you are interested in, I can help you make a choice based on what Penny is currently eating. 

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

PS: DK has a wonderful search functions. You never have to read through pages and pages of info, you can search for a specific thing and even get the results in chronologic order so that you aren't reading out-of-date info. 

[Laura and Angus]

I hear you. It can be expensive! We feed our dog Earthborn Holistic Grain-Free - Great Plains or Coastal Catch. It is a 28lb bag that lasts around a month (give or take) and it's $52. We buy it at our pet store - PetValu, but many of these are also available online and they'll ship them to you (*cough cough* Amazon!). I'm not sure what you consider to be "reasonably priced," since I think everyone may feel slightly different on that, but to me I feel that $50/month is not too crazy. We were feeding Blue Buffalo and that is around $50 for a 22lb bag - we switched when their whole scandal came out and such...

But frankly, you can afford what you can afford. I have done some price comparisons online to figure out and we settled on what we're most comfortable spending. Good luck in your search!

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

Feeding a better quality food with less fillers will create less poop - a huge benefit to those of us who clean it up! :-} 

In the old days, I fed my dogs the common foods you see advertised.  I had healthy dogs, and wondered why I should change.  I kept reading and realized that what used to be fine for dogs is no longer 'fine' at all (due to imports from China mostly), so I shopped around and switched to a much better quality food at pretty much the same cost (taking in cost per portion).  When one of my dogs developed skin problems, we switched to Orijen because it has the best Omega ratio.  This contributed to his skin health. I found several local small stores that carry Orijen or will order it if I ask.

PS, Penny is adorable!!!

[Sally M]

Thanks!
This afternoon, we purchased a semi-expensive dry dog food. We got Wellness in the puppy formula, grain free. It seemed kinda in the middle, price-wise. We are slowly introducing it to Penny so she can get accustomed to it. We got the chicken/turkey one. I hope she likes it and it likes her. I didn't realize that we had to worry about dog food from China (and why does the U.S. let them export their inferior dog foods to our country?!? Never mind, I know that answer. Cheap). I just assumed Purina was still good; Del Monte was good, and all the "American" brands were still good. Well, so much for that. I've been educated. Thanks to everyone for helping me sort this out. Our other two dogs are seniors and I'm not going to switch their food this late in their lives. They are doing fine.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

The multinational corporations purchase their ingredients through third party food brokers, and the bottom line is always the primary consideration, so most of those ingredients come from China. If you have older dogs, you may remember the massive per food recalls of 2007? Thousands of dogs and cats died and were made permanently ill, some of them belonging to members of this group, due to a Chinese company substituting melamine for rice gluten. All of the grocery store brands were affected, because most of them are owned by the same corporations, and they all purchase the cheapest ingredients through the same food broker, Menu Foods.That's when a lot of us became educated on pet food. I had been feeding Nutro for 19 years without a problem up to that point. I highly recommend Marion Nestle's bestseller :Pet Food Politics: the Chihuahua in the Coal Mine" which explains exactly what happened in 2007. Fast reading, fascinating, and probably available at your local library. 

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

And more recently, chicken jerky from China has been in the news for killing and causing permanent kidney damage in thousands of pets. Multiple brands are involved, most of them the ones sold at the grocery store, Walmart, Target, etc, all of them sold by Purina, Del Monte,  and similar "American" companies. This has been all over Facebook for several years, and I wonder where all these shocked pet owners were back in 2007, when the FDA first issued warnings about chicken jerky from China. One would hope that we had learned something the first time around. :( 

[Sally M]

Karen, you are very knowledgeable and you've been quite helpful. I thank you for that. You've opened my eyes. Like I said, I've been educated. (Oh, BTW, I don't belong to FaceBook and have no plans to join it. Long story).

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Believe me, I understand. I hate Facebook. If it weren't for the rescue, I wouldn't belong either.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Sally, did you get Wellness Core? That's an excellent choice. 

http://www.wellnesspetfood.com/product-details.aspx?pet=dog&pid...