Comparing dog food! - Page 7

I can't find Origen locally and think it's way too expensive to buy from K-9 Cuisine. I started feeding Timberwolf Organics Ocean Blue, grain-free. I buy it off the net from the Timberwolf.com site and pay $58.99 including shipping for a 33 lb bag.  Their  site also lists distributors, so you may be able to buy it for less. I'm not a dog food guru and picked Timberwolf just because it is grain-free and the protein source is salmon. Maybe it's not as good as Orijen, I don't know, but some of you may want to check out their website. $85 for 29 lbs of dog food is just ludicrous, I don't pay that for my own food .

I agree yellowrose,

Beneful is poison, it has artifical sweetner in it, I believe it's Sorbitol, and artifical colors,
I don't even think dogs can see color like we do, but lets throw that in.

Probably kills your dog slowly over a long period of time, so it's hard to trace.

I feed Canidae All Life Stages, inbetween feeding a raw diet,
it costs me $ 31.00 a 40 lb. bag.

The dogs love the taste, and their fur isn't falling out, and they are not scratching all the time,
it made their coats thicker and fuller, I'm very satisfied, no complaints here

I started to question my sanity on the $85 I quoted. So I went back to the online stores and just did a random pick, it was a California Store which is much closer to Montana than the back east stores. The food cost at this store was $55 for the 29.7# bag for Adult Orijen, so I went thru the motions until I got to the shipping. The amount was $83.30 so $28.30 for the shipping alone. That made K9 Cuisine back in the first spot for online stores! LOL! I agree it is alot of money even at $65 a bag, I do like this food though, but then I do not use alot of it as most days they eat RAW.

I used Canidae chicken & rice formular for a long time, again mostly my sons dog. Then the scare of acetomenophen (sp) in the food ran me right out of there. It might have been just a bogus report but it was enough for me with all the other recalls going on.

Blitzen I willcheck out the Timberwolf, maybe order a bag of it next time but got another bag of Orijen on the way ..... I also agree, darn dogs eat better than me!

Trailrider, I'd appreciate your thoughts on the Timberwolf. I've had dogs for a long time and started back in the days when the dogs ate food with a lot of corn and other stuff that is supposed to kill them today. They all lived to be 12 to 13, one 14 1/2,  and died from complications of old age.  All pups weaned on Purina Puppy Chow, 42 whelped, 42 survived to go to their new homes and lived long lives eating super market dog food. My second pet ever, a mixed stray picked up on the city streets would only eat Gaines Burgers. I had to have her put down at 23, she had a stroke.  I'll bet it was from her eating those Gaines Burgers  that were full of sweeteners. I think that dry food cost me around $10 for 50 lbs and was locally milled. 

If I ever find out we are being tricked into feeding all this expensive food, I'm going to buy me a shotgun and go hunting. If they convict me, how much longer can I live anyway and if you act crazy enough they lock you away from the rest of the criminals so you don't hurt them. I also think about how many of my dogs ate their own and their kennel mates stool, so wonder why we worry so much about a little rat crap in a bag of kibble .

Blitzen

           Before I setteled on Orijen I researched TWO aka Timberwolf.   Like you it looked real good to me.  Here is what I found.  First contact TWO and asked who manufactires their food??  You will get back a bunch of mumbo jumbo saying it is priority information and not aviable to the public.  Boom Red Flag.  Diamond Pet food used to manufacture it then when there was a public outcry they switched to Chenago Valley Pet foods. I actually knew somebody whose sister worked on the production line.  Both manufactures have been involved in numerious  recalls and neither have the best reputaion.

Recently talking to TWO customers they have changed the fromula without telling the public cheapened it up quite a bit.  They found out from their dogs who either wouldn't eat it or had negative effects on their dogs. These fformer TWO customers have been flocking to Orijen in droves.

So to make a long story short you are much better off with Orijen sure it costs more but it is by far and away the best kibble on the market.  They manufacture their own food in their own plant. They buy the ingrediants themselves fresh from local farms and do their own quality control. TWO can say none of the above.  Take the time contact them ask these questions for your own peace of mind and see waht they say.

If someone can't answer my questions with a straight and  to the point answer and what I get is marketing mumbo jumbo I want nothing to do with it because in my mind they have something to hide.

Blitzen I know what you mean about the food dogs ate and the cost per bag many moons ago. My dad had a Beagle that ate tablescraps (which were probably OK IMO) and a canned dog food. It was called Strongheart, with a pic of a GSD on the label  I sometimes wonder if the food wasn't better back then or at least the ingredients may have been "cleaner", like not moldy grains or cancerous animals etc. Also I think maybe there wasn't the use of hidden chemicals in the food then.

I haven't had a chance to look into Timberwolf yet. I read what Larrydee just said and thats something to think about..... I have contacted the company that makes Orijen (Champion Pet Foods). I was told that they get shipments daily of live chicken etc. and they are butchered at the plant, so fresh. I asked specifically if there was any ethoxiquin added  for preservatives and was told absolutely not. I will also say my friend has the cutest little "mutt" named Cheech. He looks like a Chihuahua/Terrier X. She said she kept trying alot of different dog foods and he would eat a little then go on a hunger strike and only want people food. I gave her some Orijen to try and he likes it real well.

And just when I was starting to feel comfortable with Timberwolf. I cannot justify $85 for a bag of dog food, so will have to give it some thought and try to find a local dealer for Orijen. Blitz will eat sawdust when he gets hungry enough, so I'm sure he'll love the Orijen. At our house we eat what's in our bowl or we get very, very hungry. No picky dogs here....ever.

Good point about the quality of the dog food of the past. Maybe it was safer in ways that cancelled out the harm caused by the corn .

Blitzen I never would have bought Orijen at $85 a bag, that's nuts! It was $59.99 and now just went up to $64.99 (that is bad enough!). I just bought another bag but am hoping the pet food store in Missoula that I kind of know the owner will get it in cheaper. I also bought a bag of Sojos Europa but it hasn't yet arrived. Just dehydrated veggies,alphalfa, kelp etc. to mix with the meat. I will see how far it goes for the price. I think it was $53 with shipping. Kind of comparable to Preference by Honest Kitchen but I liked the ingredients better as Preference had alphalfa has the first ingredient. I know my itchy bitchy can eat corn bread muffins (with whole wheat flour) and they don't bother her, nothing that is human grade seems to make her itch. But on most dog foods she will flair up, I tried alot of different foods for her. So my conclusion, with her anyway, is there is something else in dog food she is allergic to, those mystery ingredients!

My dog who is allergic to chicken has no trouble with corn.  It takes an elimination diet to figrue it out (I hear they can do it was blood testing now?)

Over the years I have had around 35, 40 dogs and did some long-term  boarding.  All ate the corn-containing food mentioned above, and none demonstrated any symptoms of allergies. All did just fine eating it too. As far as I know. the blood tests are not very accurate or reliable for food or inhalation. I had my first GSD blood tested 2 times for inhalation and food. Both times showed different results - first said only lamb, the second only soy. As it turned out, it was neither, all inhalation from many different sources.  For sure blood testing would be alot simpler than an elimination diet.

It's almost always the protein source when diet is involved and the most common offenders are beef and poultry. Next comes grains.  Since so many manufacturers today are using novel protein sources like fish, elk, bison, I would imagine those protein sources will eventually find their way to the "offenders list" as has lamb.  On the surface all these novel protein sources look good to us, but in the end they might not be such a good thing with a dog that is truly food sensitive. What are we going to use as the protein source if they develope allergies to the novel sources? I don't think the vet world is getting to the actual source of these adverse reactions and why our dogs have so many more allergies today than they had 20 years ago. Something has changed making many immune cripples that recognize proteins as the enemy and send out histamines to "kill" them. For sure  these scratching dogs should never be used for breeding, but I think many breeders minimize it as "just a dog with some skin problems" when in fact it goes a lot deeper that that.