# So confused ... Puppy Food... Please advise



## Col_Gal (Oct 28, 2020)

There is so much information on the "right" food out there.
My 10 week old puppy is currently on Hills Science Diet Puppy Food because that's what he got from his breeder, but he recommended I switch to Royal Canin. 
Some GS owners I know say go definitely "grain free". The vet I took him to for his second round of shots said do NOT go grain free. Huh?
Please, some advice. I am not planning to go "raw" at this time. I would just have some high quality food for him until he turns 18 or 24 months and maybe then switch to raw.
Cost is not really a concern, I really just want great quality.
Thank you in advance.


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## Damicodric (Apr 13, 2013)

Remember. The best food for your dog is the food that your dog does best on. 

There’s hundreds of opinions on this forum and this topic can be touchy.

I’ll offer you this: Royal Canin - a breed specific food - I wouldn’t consider. Chicken by product meal? Wheat gluten meal? Not a chance.

Hills Science Diet - corn, corn gluten meal, chicken meal. Run.

I’ve been through the Fromms, Blue Buffalo, Origen et al. For whatever reason, Origen was far too rich. Fromm gave all of my dogs soft stools no matter what the protein. Blue Buffalo has far too many recalls, lawsuits, etc for me.

Two years ago, a buddy of mine insisted I try Victor. I’ve had all three on Victor Dog n Puppy and graduated them onto Victor Hero Canine at 10-12 months. 

Again. This just works for my three. They’re all happy, coats and nails are meticulous, energy levels are wide and they wait enthusiastically for morning and evening eats.

So. I don’t claim I’m right or wrong, I just know the impact of Victor on my three GSD’s. 











Best of luck in your hunt for the best, most appropriate food for your pup!


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## Magwart (Jul 8, 2012)

1. Grain-free is a marketing scam, and always has been. It might be one of the greatest pet food marketing scams of all time. They don't put more meat in grain-free--they may actually use LESS meat because they inflate the protein with legumes. They convinced consumers to pay extra for tapioca, beans, lentils and peas. Worse, dogs don't digest legumes all that well, so you'd get better digestion out of most dogs with rice or oats than with chickpeas and lentils. Whoever is telling you to buy grain-free probably hasn't done the work of parsing labels or seen the math on calculating where the protein is coming from. 

2. Grain-free have been correlated to some dogs developing a life-threatening heart condition (DCM). Causation hasn't (yet) been proven, but the FDA issued a cryptic warning last year about not feeding grain-free. Vets are well aware of this -- that's likely why your vet wants you to feed a grain-in food! Ask your vet "why" and find out!

FWIW, a few vet nutritionists claimed to know the grain-free food is the "cause" (and then had that blow up in their faces with a paper that's been flagged for some embarrassing statistical errors and looks like it may be retracted by the journal). The problem is no one has yet published any good data about causation. One theory is the beans are interfering with taurine absorption, but that's just a theory. 

The conservative position is to feed a grain-in food until it all shakes out. We have a mega-thread that tracks and critiques the research -- it has a title with "FDA warning" in it. There's a lot of good, important info in that thread, with deep dives into both raw data and the veterinary papers. 

3. A lot of puppies do fine on RC or SD. Personally, I don't like corn-poops that come out of GSDs--I'd rather the food have rice, oats, barley, etc. than corn. Part of that for me is also the aflatoxin concern with corn. I like how Fromm Gold grain-in large-breed pupppy food feeds out, as well as Diamond Naturals Large-Breed Puppy Food. Others have had very good success with some of the Victor options.


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## Damicodric (Apr 13, 2013)

Just curious. You think grain free is a bigger game than a breed specific formula???

Royal Canin is just beyond the pale - for me. 

I’m hearing Exxon is coming out with a gasoline formulated strictly for BMW x7’s.... the Mercedes 500 formulation is around the corner. 🙄

Agreed. There are some very good grains .... and also what the grain frees don’t provide, they offer in carbs - potatoes, sweet potatoes, etc.

I just can’t consider any “by product” sludge, corn, corn gluten ...... etc.

Honestly, just me, I feed nothing w chicken, either.

Haven’t had an ear infection in .... I don’t know when.


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## Sabis mom (Mar 20, 2014)

All I can tell anyone is what I look for.

As few ingredients as possible, and preferably none I can't pronounce.
Local sourcing or at least disclosed sourcing and named ingredients. Anything like by product or meat meal makes me nervous.
I look at company history, transparency and response. Have they had recalls? What for? Was it corrected? And most importantly how did they react to it?
A decade or more ago a huge company had a massive recall due to contaminants. Two things stood out for me. They knew pets were dying months before the recall was forced and actually paid multiple owners to keep quiet and they made no real attempt to fix the source of the contamination.


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## Argos3872 (Sep 1, 2020)

Col_Gal said:


> There is so much information on the "right" food out there.
> My 10 week old puppy is currently on Hills Science Diet Puppy Food because that's what he got from his breeder, but he recommended I switch to Royal Canin.
> Some GS owners I know say go definitely "grain free". The vet I took him to for his second round of shots said do NOT go grain free. Huh?
> Please, some advice. I am not planning to go "raw" at this time. I would just have some high quality food for him until he turns 18 or 24 months and maybe then switch to raw.
> ...


I had the same experience. My puppy is also 10 weeks old. The breeder was feeding Call of the Wild grain free. When I took him into the vet for his check up and shots she strongly recommended that I not feed grain free. One of the other posters did a nice job of explaining why. For what it is worth I changed to Fromms large breed puppy. He likes it and I have not noticed his stools being soft. They did change color. good luck.


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## paxloversdog (Nov 10, 2020)

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## Magwart (Jul 8, 2012)

Damicodric said:


> Just curious. You think grain free is a bigger game than a breed specific formula???


I actually do! The breed-specific food is a small, niche product that lures relatively few people. It's silly to me too, but it's small-scale silly. Grain-free is a mass-marketing dream that changed a category -- most of the dog food sold in the US before the DCM scare was grain-free. It convinced millions of people to pay more for ultra-cheap beans. The scale of the consumer perception that shifted with grain-free marketing is staggering. 

The moment of clarity for me was when I compared the label of Fromm Gold grain-in to their grain-free food and realized they both have the same protein content. The grain-in has several animal protein sources but no legumes, and the grain-free has fewer animal ingredients but several legumes. So when you subtract out the beans from the grain-free, the protein content from animal sources is lower than the grain-in....and yet it costs more. It was an annoying thing to realize. This comparison of the 2010 and 2018 Orijen ingredient list is also jaw-dropping: Is Change in Pet Food a Good Thing?

Most dogs digest millet, barley and oats quite well, and many digest rice well too. They've probably been eating cooked millet as long as humans have been growing it (10,000+ years?), as early domesticated dogs likely ate human-food leftovers (a/k/a trash). The concern I have with grains is actually present with beans too: crop contamination in the U.S. (Roundup, arsenic, etc.). That's a topic for another thread. You won't escape it if you feed high-end kibble, and if you feed raw, you're just choosing different industrial contamination in the meat supply, as industrially produced meat has it's own very serious problems. All of this is a much bigger issue than dog food--it's the human food supply too.



Damicodric said:


> I just can’t consider any “by product” sludge, corn, corn gluten ...... etc.


I completely agree! The "corn-fed poop" I referred to above is a very yellow, stinky poop common in dogs fed these feed-grade ingredients. I can't stand it. With my foster dogs who come out of shelters after a few weeks of eating a high-corn kibble, I always breathe a sigh of relief when I get the first normal-colored poop out of them.


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## doubleroll (Jul 5, 2011)

We had our pup on Diamond Puppy from the breeder and then Diamond Large breed puppy. She didnt really like either but she did go after our chihuahu’s Lotus for a while then lost interest. She was under weight and didn’t eat voraciously and never finished her food even with Stella & Chewy toppers. She would pick the toppers most of the time. Switched to Orijen and what a difference eats all her food and has gained almost 4 pounds in 2 weeks. Vet says it’s great food but expensive of course. We are just happy she is doing well eating normally now...


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## Jax08 (Feb 13, 2009)

Don't overthink this.

1. Grain Free came about years ago when there was issues with wheat and animals died. Overall, it's a marketing scam. If you replace grains with peas for protein - you've gained nothing. 
2. Hills sucks.

Find a good food that is 30% protein/ 20% fat that is no more than 1: 1.3 calcium/phos ratio.

I live Victor High Energy. Others like Purina Pro Plan. Some like the grain free route but if you do, try to find a grain free that doesn't have legumes as a protein source. Some, like me, just feed raw. If you choose raw, please buy a balanced commercial food until your dog is full grown and then switch to a balanced homemade. So buy what you can afford.


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