I have been experiencing with all sorts of variations of different ways of feeding working dogs in the past and I will try to share my opinion with you and hopefully, it could help some of you make it a bit easier to choose from all the many choices and mostly marketing suggestions. Yes, pls remember that in the modern day most of what you will hear and see about dog food in your local pet store is marketing, then there is marketing and there are lies. This is my friends a multi million dollar industry! Most pet dogs are overweight and you will just about never see a dog that is in a starved critical condition unless it is some stray or a rare case of course.
My GSP seems too SKINNY. No, he doesn't. You are just used to Fat Dogs. GSPs are working and running dogs. They are lean, esp till they are 2 or even 3 years old and fill out a bit.
PROTEIN Level. It has been a "phat" lately to feed kibble with Protein levels in the high 30s to low 40s percent to pet dogs. I have seen many horrific experiences from feeding such food. Unless you live in the Yukon, your dogs live outside year round and run 10s of miles mushing daily, don't even think about it! I personally know several cases of allergies developed from feeding such high protein (IMO) diets and often it means life in agony or death out of mercy. For example, pure Chicken Meat has about 25% protein. Give this a thought for a while... My dogs often run 25km every second day with the sled in the winter and I feed 26% protein food. Take it or leave it, but I am serious about this paragraph ;-)
My GSP seems too SKINNY. No, he doesn't. You are just used to Fat Dogs. GSPs are working and running dogs. They are lean, esp till they are 2 or even 3 years old and fill out a bit.
PROTEIN Level. It has been a "phat" lately to feed kibble with Protein levels in the high 30s to low 40s percent to pet dogs. I have seen many horrific experiences from feeding such food. Unless you live in the Yukon, your dogs live outside year round and run 10s of miles mushing daily, don't even think about it! I personally know several cases of allergies developed from feeding such high protein (IMO) diets and often it means life in agony or death out of mercy. For example, pure Chicken Meat has about 25% protein. Give this a thought for a while... My dogs often run 25km every second day with the sled in the winter and I feed 26% protein food. Take it or leave it, but I am serious about this paragraph ;-)
PACKAGE. Do not worry at all about what the package looks like, what colors are on it and what pictures are on it. It is all nonsense.
READ the INGREDIENTS! That is just about the most important thing to do, yet only very few do it! Have we as a society really become this stupid?! I am sorry, but I consistently go to Costco where I buy food X with first 2 ingredients meat and yet most people besides me buy food Y with first 2 ingredients corn and rice for the same money, just because it is Pedigree. I never say anything, but I want to say "what exactly made you decide to buy this bag of corn vs the bag of dog food"? But I know what it is, marketing and that fluffy Yellow Lab on the front. Remember ingredients are listed in order of volume in the food. With that being said most of them are used in their dehydrated form (very light) vs meat is used "wet" (very heavy). Therefore even if the meat is number 1 on the list, it really should be about 4 down, because it is compared to everything else dried. Smart huh, not by accident ;) So then, if you buy a bag of dog food and you have some sort of meat at num 3, it really is about 6 or 7 in reality and then you are buying a bag of corn or corn peels, yes that is right my friends, even with the fluffy shiny dog on the front of the bag, because anything after about 5 on the list is minuscule.
PUPPY vs SENIOR. Dog Food/Kibble. All this nonsense about Puppy Food and Adult Food and Large Breed, come on, seriously. OK again, check it out. Let's say mathematically. There is a difference in fat 1% for senior dogs ($10 more) That in reality means (more or less) that from 100 kibbles if you give him 99 tomorrow you got your self the same Senior dog food. Oh yeah, puppy kibble, well what are we gonna do then? Well, we will give him 101 and we have our selves Puppy Food! ($15 more per bag) ;)
KIBBLE vs RAW? I feed both and I don't use any magical formula. Just like I don't use one for my exact ratio of salami on my sandwich every day. I just slap on however much I think I need that day and if I ran 20km with my dogs, I slap on double! If we sit on the couch for a week because it's -30 outside, I don't slap on any because if it jiggles, it's extra lol. ;) If I don't have raw or don't have kibble for few days, who cares?
HUMAN FOOD? If I ever hear that Dogs Can Not have Human Food I will explode. Somehow they survived it 15 000 years with human leftovers and without kibble!
GRAIN FREE? No, it's a scam. Read the article below please, it explains in detail why.
HOW OFTEN? Once a day, keep your dog a bit on the hungry side and excited for his next meal. Very important, unless you like them dead beat, fat couch zombies that don't even get up for their food. There is many more reasons than I can explain, but this is not the article. If your dog works very hard, if she is nursing etc, do twice a day.
In the end, I would also like to mention that many high quality kibbles are hard as a rock. I blend kibble for my puppies and I use a commercial blender and that is when I started noticing that some kibble simply won't blend even after few minutes and some are mushed in 5 seconds. Well, I don't think the rock solid ones are all that nice in the belly, just something to play with maybe.
Please READ this ARTICLE:
Thank you for this valuable candid information. It has certainly debunked several feeding myths for me!
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