Anyone use Life's Abundance dog food? Just wondering how it compares with the other grain-free varieties.

G23

Had Birddogs live 15 years eating Old Roy from Walmart.

Every dog will react differently to what is fed them. I have 3 dogs , 2 Parson Russell terriers and a Bull Mastiff. The male parson has had every brand of grain free in his bowl at one time or another and yet had to have allergy shots etc ad nauseam almost his entire life. The only food that he can tolerate for any period of time is Fromme dog food. I have all three on Fromme because I can get it at a reasonable price from a local store. They are doing very well on it .

Research a raw diet for dogs. Many over complicate it. It's quite simple and not particularly expensive. My dog shed like crazy till I switched her from a high grade grain free kibble to an all raw meat, bone, and organ, diet. Instantly the shedding stopped and hasn't returned.

This is what 40,000,000 years of evolution has designed dogs to eat.

Haha! Thats right.

Either that or the 50 pound bags that grandpa had my load at the feed store. GTA brand.

We have friends that have service dogs. They feed them raw chicken.

Oh, I'm going to step in it now! Grain-free is a fad. There, I said it for all to hear.

Dogs can successfully consume pretty much anything. Why? Because they are scavengers, not obligate carnivores. Wild canines generally eviscerate their prey and eat the guts first which, incedentally, are generally full of vegetable matter.

Why do some dogs shed or have other problems while consuming brands x,y,z dog food? They may have been fed poor quality dog food in the past or they may have food allergies. Interestingly, the most common food allergy in dogs is beef! I think shelling out extra for dog food simply because its defies logic.

Bottom line, if you like your current dog food, you should keep your dog food.

Now, because I am a masochist I will rail against raw diets. I really discourage feeding of raw diets, especially poultry, because food borne pathogens are so common. Not only do you expose your pet to things like E. coli and Campylobacter you are also contaminating the food prep area as well. I especially discourage raw diets in homes with little children or the elderly.

Oh yeah, I'm a veterinarian, not some crank with a keyboard.

My 2 Parson terriers get supplemental meals from the backyard based on number of times I have found them playing with dead mice and piles of bird feathers everywhere I look That said one has a severe food allergy which cleared up with Fromme. My brother has had similiar results with his 2 australian shepherds and that food.

The previous owner of my Bull Mastiff fed it raw chicken. It would be one thing if I knew where the chicken came from but I would not trust any mass butchered chicken not to contain Salmonella or some other crud.

That's the staple I feed both my dogs, bones and all. They crunch them up like pretzels. Amazing how cheaply you can buy chicken in bulk.

PS Never, but never, feed a dog cooked chicken bones, or any sort of cooked bones. They splinter sharp and hard, and can do a job on the digestive tract. Raw bones are no problems. Like I said, 40,000,000 years of evolution made their mouths and digestive tracts into raw bone processing machines. Their stomachs are five times as acidic as our own, and turn raw bones into soft rubber.

Veterinarians are divided on the raw diet controversy. Stating you're one means little, therefore, when it comes to this topic. Personal experience with a raw diet means more.

Dogs aren't particularly prone to contracting a Salmonella infection due to their short digestive tracts. Additionally, their stomach juices are five times as acidic as our own, which kills it off pretty effectively. Remember, a big part of a wild canid's diet is carrion, i.e., rotting flesh and bone from previous kills. 40,000,000 years of evolution has equipped them to deal with it.

I will also add that most of what vets know about canine diet is taught them by the kibble manufacturing industry, which (if you will pardon the pun) has a definite dog in the fight over proper canine diet.

I think a lot of a dog's longevity is genetics, but I do like to feed my animals something with less crap in it. I assume the raw food diets are probably best for their health but I just don't want to deal with the preparation and clean up and potential for germs. I like the convenience of bagged food. For those with a Costco nearby, they seem to have some healthier, yet still convenient options now. My dog passed years ago so I don't have experience with their food but this one seems decent based on the ingredients.

Costco Nature's Domain Dog Food

"Vets are trained to perform surgery, diagnose and treat disease, and prescribe drugs. They typically receive little meaningful training in animal nutrition in vet school because there are no degree or certificate programs related to the specific field of canine nutrition. And what they do learn is often from sales reps who work for the multinationals that own the pet food companies. Despite these facts, vets are considered by many to be authorities on what to feed our pets.

What this means for us as pet owners is that asking the typical vet for advice on what to feed your dog or cat is about as helpful, say, as asking your dentist why your leg hurts or your shoulder is sore." Dori's Reply

Dissapointing Paul........

My dog has Science Diet free choice but eats only about 80lbs per year because she mostly eats a share of my meals with a few adjustments. Strangely she likes most Italian dishes and chili while hamburgers and eggs are at the bottom of her list.

She has also killed and eaten many small rodents including squirrel and rabbits. For three years in a row she caught and ate fawns but quit hunting them a couple years ago.

Wasn't that the greeter that went missing from your local a while back?

Poor old Roy. LOL. If it was him, the dog that ate him got much better nutrition than what's contained in commercial dog food.

Twenty seven years of private practice and I've seen plenty of dogs that got sick from eating raw poultry, especially puppies. The problem with poultry is the stuff raised in large confinement barns (i.e. Tyson) is it carries a lot more coliform bacteria on the carcass. Feed at your own risk.

Amazing, then, that dogs fed such a diet do so well in terms of general health.

I've been feeding my dog "Taste Of The Wild"

After 40,000,000 years one might think there would be a convenient way to feed a dog complete nutrition in every bite.

They've only been domesticated in the last blink of an eye, in terms of how long their species has been on the planet, and only a tiny fraction of that time eating commercial dog food. Before commercial dog food, they just ate discarded bones, guts, heads, feet, pelts, unwanted organs, supplemented with whatever they could catch and kill (or find already dead) around the homestead.

You can't reason with them, they're halfwits. This one by virtue of being half that is their chief. He has no comprehension that many schools have animal nutrition departments and that they can measure nutrition input and work/meat/milk output precisely. He also doesn't believe in vaccination.

While true, longevity, disease, and other health problems probably are not well documented.

I have my newest dog in an obedience class and the lady teaching has made suggestions that I'm not how might you say, being good to my dog by rewarding with kibble rather than the high dollar stuff from PetCo or wherever.

That's what I feed..

WRT raw diet, if you have a dog you want to train for bird hunting be sure to not feed them any raw chicken/duck/etc. Might seem like a no brainer but it happens and when it does it's hard to break the dog from viewing any shot birds as food.

SS

Anyone that does not hunt will not have a dog that makes that error.

There's a British vet on youtube that says the exact opposite, and she has only retrieve trained bird dogs. I'll see if I can find it. But she states that they know the difference between what's fed to them and what they are asked to retrieve.

Here she is. Looks like she has flushing dogs rather than retrievers, but she states that retrievers wont get confused with it.

Purina Healthy Choice for 15+ years for our Dachshunds, the latest one is 13. Before that we feed them Come and Get it. Most all lived to 13-15 years. If were up to me it would be the cheapest rations the feed store carries, but the wive has humanized our pets as most posting here have done.
When I was a coming up we feed all our dogs{Beagles and soon-be's} corn bread and scrapes and cheap feed store rations, the ones that did not get killed by cars, other animals, etc. out lived their usefulness and became porch hounds until they became worm food.

Just some old white guy crank with a keyboard and 50+ years dog feeding experience.

flame away

I don't have a dog. My dog died.
So, that means I don't have a dog in this fight. I'm neutral, like Switzerland.

I hereby declare TRH the winner of this discussion, since he has made the most posts.

The most fact-based posts.

My brother and I kept hounds for a number of years. At any time we'd have a few beagles, a few coonhounds and a dozen or more running hounds for fox and coyote hunting. Those days, we got our dog food made up at the feed mill by the ton. One of the dog supply houses had a formula and they sold a mix to provide the vitamins and minerals. It worked okay. We'd supplement it whenever one of the local farmers gave us a dead calf.

Today I only feed three dogs. I feed a grain-free, high-protein dog food made with completely North American sourced ingredients that costs about a hundred bucks for a 28.5 pound bag (delivered to my door.)In my opinion it's worth every penny. One bag lasts my Chessie and the two little house dogs (7 pound papillions) a month. They are all rock hard with brilliant dense coats. I will put my Chessie up against any retriever as far as speed, strength and endurance. When he's been in for his annual check up my vet has told me that he's in the top one percent of the dogs he sees with regard to health and fitness. I have been around too many dogs of too many kinds for too many years not to know that what you feed a dog matters.

Maybe a little off topic, but I am completely opposed to getting a dog castrated. The vets tend to push it because it's a quick, easy couple of hundred bucks (in this market) and almost guarantees the dog with have recurring health problems that will keep them coming back. There was a time no one thought about just routinely removing a major part of a dog's endocrine system and in those days you seldom saw all these autoimmune problems, diabetes, cancers and other maladies that it seems so many people with their "neutered" dogs are continually shelling out money to treat. Combine that with a diet of meat meal and who knows what else that comes over from China by the shipload and you've got a guaranteed recipe for canine health disaster.

End of rant.

At $3.51/lb, you could save money and just feed pulled pork!

On the neutering, a lot of that came from overpopulation of unwanted dogs. Kept pounds going.

On our latest dog the vet reco'd waiting a year before "monkeying' with his hormones.

With all due respect Hawk, I'm calling bull on this. Our beagles ate chicken bones all the time and we never had a problem whatsoever.

In a sense, you are correct. The odds are very small of any problem occurring with cooked bones. Small as the odds are, though, they are astronomical compared to the chance of any problems occurring with raw bones.

PS As a kid in the 1960s, it was common to hand your dog cooked bones after you've eaten most of the meat off. We did it all the time, too, and never had a problem. The little dogs got the pork rib bones, and the big dogs got the lamb leg bones. Few knew that this wasn't a good idea, and rarely did a problem occur (never for us), but vets will tell you that problems do sometimes occur with cooked bone shards piercing something along the digestive tract.

PPS The only bones we didn't give our dogs were cooked chicken and/or turkey bones. On rare occasions, though, one of our dogs would somehow get a hold of such a carcass and consume it entirely, without ill effect. It happened just a few years ago, in fact, and my dog was fine. I don't choose to intentionally take that chance, though

If money was an issue I wouldn't have dogs. My grandfather used to say every family has a dog and every damn poor family has two.

I know the rationale for castrating dogs. I guess I'd ask, "How's that working ?" From all indications we've got more unwanted dogs than ever. Kinda like the war on drugs. There's no quick easy solution to the problem. It's like raising kids. They need to be managed within certain constraints. We also seem to have more fat, unhealthy, unmotivated dogs than ever. Honestly, most of the house dogs I see in people's homes are pathetic.

I'm on a roll tonight. One of my pet subjects (no pun intended.) Better quit before I go off on backyard breeders.

So good to have the old nutty TRH back. We missed you...

What have I said that you think is "nutty?" Support your statement with arguments and facts.