[MyFairLacy]

I think a raw diet is the very best way to go. Lacy eats Nature's Variety raw medallions. I alternate rabbit and venison every day. If you don't like the idea of feeding raw meat, homecooking is the next best thing - you do lose some of the nutrients from cooking the food but your dog will still be getting high quality food with none of the crap commercial food has. With either, be sure to research it well and know what you're doing.

If you're going to feed kibble or canned commercial dog food, pick a premium food such as Nature's Variety, Innova, Wellness, Canidae, Merrick, California Natural, and there are others as well.

Stay away from grocery store brands and Iams, Hills Science Diet, Purina, and Eukanuba. Vets push these brands because these large companies basically pay them to. I'm in vet school right now, and Hills and Purina donate a lot of money to the American Veterinary Medical Association (Especially Hills!). They do a lot of things to contribute to veterinary education but it does cause most vets to push these crappy foods. Being a vet student, I can get 80% off Science Diet and Purina foods if I wanted - see, this gets future vets to use their products (they also gave me a free backpack and free lunch during Orientation). Hills also teaches a lot of the nutrition classes in vet school and gives students a biased opinion that kibble is the way to go and Hills is the best. They also give vets a lot of free products and kickbacks to sell their food. This is why most vets recommend it. The reality is most vets don't know much about nutrition. It's obvious when you look at the ingredients of these foods -corn, byproducts, dyes, etc. I plan to include Holisitic medicine in my practice one day, mostly the nutrition aspect. I think our pets would be so much healthier if they weren't eating a lot of the crap that most commercial dog food has in it.