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Originally Posted by Wylie's Mom  This answer makes me think you've never actually read food trial requirements or results. Bc if you had, you'd likely agree they're about as useful as a square peg in a round hole.
The recipes for dog foods are all about the same (at the end of the day) because they all have to follow AAFCO standards if they want to be certified. Our dog food, unfortunately, is *not* a science -- it's a best guess based upon what a collective has come up with for our dogs  . |
I agree in part with this statement that food trials are only sort of useful and a food trial done yourself with your own dog is really what is relevant to whether or not your dog will tolerate the diet and thrive on it.
I have to disagree that food is not a science. I do think it can be both an art and a science especially when you take a dog with a medical condition into consideration. I can tell you that the diet that was just made for my Teddy has each ingredient strategically placed for a certain predicted biochemical response to help offset the problem he has (a genetic problem). It's nothing I could come up with as good on my own, and I have been wrong about some of my beliefs such as he needed higher protein than she was giving me.
I suppose how I come down on this issue in general is a middle-of-the-pack approach -- that owners should feed whatever they feel is best if their dog is doing well on it. If the dog is not doing well, then it is time to cast aside some hard core beliefs we may have (right or wrong) and do what "the collective" has studied to be best for that particular problem. I think home cooking has served me well, but there is no denying that a commercial diet would be better for my Teddy at this time and that home cooking for this problem is not easy nor cheap nor as predictable as commercial food would be. I am ok with that, because I have to take his other concerns and my own priorities into consideration. He's my dog, I'm in tune with him, and I haven't done wrong by him or the others yet by listening to my intuition.
I think it behooves all of us to have a little faith sometimes. Maybe not blind faith, but the amount of distrust and disdain we all seem to have for the pet food industry as a whole is kinda sad when you really think about it.