Originally Posted by lara2913 (Post 1335577)

In my opionion the best 'dog food' available is orijen, high protein, no grains, just the way it should be. If I were to feed a kibble, this would be the one.

However I feed raw because after extensive research I believe that the best diet for a dog is one that is the closest to what they would eat in the wild. My dogs eat raw meaty bones (meat with edible bone..chicken wings, drumsticks, lamb chops, ribs, poultry necks etc), raw muscle meat (meat without bone..breast meat, heart, ground meat etc), organ meat (liver, kidney etc), live yogurt, raw eggs (including the shell) and a small amount of pureed fruit and veg (like it would be in their preys stomach).

My dogs are thriving on it, they are healthier than ever and i'm absolutly certain that they enjoy it far more than the same boring dog food day after day. The most important thing is to do lots and lots of research and make what you believe to be the right desision for your dog.

Here are a couple of great websites that I thought might interest some people,

www.rawdogranch.com

http://www.njboxers.com/faqs.htm

Originally Posted by MyFairLacy (Post 1335172)

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.

Originally Posted by marcerella02 (Post 1335647)

About the Orijen. Layla eats home cooked food but there are times we need kibble and it is always available to her during the day but her tummy is having a VERY hard time with the switch.. any ideas??? i keep trying to start... small amounts.. and the next day she is sick :(

Originally Posted by lara2913 (Post 1335723)

Do you mean she is having a tough time changing to eating orijen from the other kibble she used to eat? Its a very good kibble but is rich so if she is switching from a kibble high in grains, that could be why. Have you been mixing it with the old kibble? That could help. To be honest it has to be tough on her body to have to digest kibble and home cooked, once in the stomach kibble swells up and can take up to 12 hours to make it through the system. However natural food such as raw or home cooked digests relatively quickly, within 5 hours so if she is having both in her system at once it may get confused and that could be causing digestive problems. Is there any way you could stop the kibble altogether? When I find it difficult to feed raw, such as when we travel I take stuff like tinned sardines, cottage cheese etc and I often simply slip into a store wherever I am and buy some things for them in there.

Originally Posted by marcerella02 (Post 1337440)

i would love to stop the kibble all together and just home cook but we travel from Canada into the US a lot and i can't bring her food... so there are times when it is mandatory that i have kibble with her... i do my best to try and feed her on the road what i can find, but there are times when we just need the kibble. it's tough... she is mostly on protien with a bit of veggies and grains with her home cooked food... so i didn't think the switch would bother her much... the kibble we use right now is Fromms... not bad.. but not as good as Orijen

Originally Posted by Ellie May (Post 1334572)

I will not feed Science Diet anymore. I also wouldn't feed Iams or Euk. Iams has been doing cruel animal testing for years.