Our Recommended Food List
Please feed your dog high quality food. While healthy foods may initially cost a little more, you will find them to be cost effective overall since one of the best ways to keep your pet healthy is to feed nutritious food. Also, higher quality foods have less filler, so you can feed your dogs less and get better nutrition.
Below is our list of foods we recommend and how to find them. The web sites of most companies have a store locater online, which will help you to find a given food locally. Most of these foods are recommended by The Whole Dog Journal, which uses rigorous standards for testing and evaluating food quality. Please see The Whole Dog Journal for their full list.
We are including foods in this list based upon their ingredients, availability, and reported evaluation results. If your dog does not do well on a particular food, please switch them to another over the course of one to two weeks. Also, consider changing your dog’s food a couple of times a year to ensure complete nutrition.
Note, this list will change periodically. The date of this list is March 3rd, 2011.
Annamet Petfoods
215-453-0381
has 8 varities, including 3 grain free
www.annimet.com
Back to Basics
1-800-219-2558
www.backtobasicspetfood.com
Breeders Choice (Avoderm, Pinnacle Holistic & other brands)
1-800-255-4286
www.breederschoice.com
Blue Buffalo Company
1-800-919-2833
www.bluebuff.com
Blue Seal Feeds (By Nature & By Nature Organics)
1-800-367-2730
www.bynaturepetfoods.com
Canidae
1-800-398-1600
http://www.canidae.com/
Castor & Pollux Pet Works
10800-875-7518
www.backtobasicspetfood.com
Lines include Organix and Ultramix
Champion Petfoods (Acana)
1-877-939-0006
www.castorpolluxpet.com
Lines include Acana & Orijen
Diamond Pet Products
1-800-658-0624
www.chickensoupforthepetloverssoul.com
Lines include Chicken Soup for the Pet Lovers Soul, Premium Edge, Professional Pet Food, and Taste of the Wild
Dick Van Patten’s Natural Balance
1-800-829-4493
http://www.naturalbalanceinc.com
This brand has regular premium kibble, an organic formula, and very good formulas for allergy prone dogs. You can get it at Petco.
Evanger’s
1-800-288-6796
www.evangersdogfood.com
Fromm Family Foods
1-800-325-6331
www.frommfamily.com
Merrick Pet Foods
1-800-664-7387
http://www.merrickpetcare.com
Mulligan Stew Pet Food
1-888-364-7839
www.mulliganstewpetfood.com
Natura: Innova, California Natural (Adult), or Healthwise
Company was bought by Proctor & Gamble last year, so check formulas to ensure prior high standards have been maintained.
1-800-532-7261
www.naturapet.com
Nature’s Variety
1-888-519-7387
www.naturesvariety.com
Lines include Instinct and Prairie
Premium Edge
1-800-658-0624
www.premiumedgepetfood.com
Wellpet (Holistic Select, Eagle Pack, and Wellness brands)
1-800-225-0904
www.wellpet.com
Quality Foods Should Contain:
Whole Protein or Protein meal (chicken, duck, fish, lamb, chicken meal, lamb meal, salmon meal etc. ) as the first ingredient, or in some allergy diets, it may be the 2nd. If a whole meat is the first ingredient, then a protein meal is ideally 2nd or 3rd to ensure the dog is getting sufficient protein. Ideally, ingredients are organic.
Whole, unprocessed grains, vegetables, and fruits. Avoid foods with corn.
Quality foods should contain little to no of the following:
Food fragments - lower-cost by-products of another food manufacturing process, such as:
brewer's rice and wheat bran...Manufacturers usually include at least one fragment to help lower costs. Beware any food that includes several fragments.
High quality foods should NOT contain:
Fats or proteins named generically (for example, animal fat/poultry fat instead of beef fat/chicken fat); Generic animal fat and animal protein/animal meal can come from any animal and translates to cheap, low quality ingredients.
Artificial preservatives BHA, BHT, or ethoxyquin.
Artificial colors;
Sweeteners (corn syrup, sucrose, ammoniated glycyrrhizin) to improve unappealing food;
Propylene glycol - a toxic substance when consumed in large amounts; added to some “chewy" foods to keep them moist.
Home Cooking
Just as in people, home cooking is likely healthier and more tasty than serving processed foods, but it’s also more time consuming. Additionally, care needs to be taken that a home cooked diet is nutritionally complete over time, and that calcium be added in a proper amount. Home cooking for dogs needs to be more precise than cooking for people. Calcium does not occur in food naturally in the amounts that dogs need, and without adding calcium to the food in a correct amount, a dog’s bone could weaken and even break. That’s one reason why we recommend taking great care when cooking for your dog to make sure that the food is balanced and nutritionally complete.
For information on canine nutrition, including recipes for home cooked dog food, see the classic book by Richard H. Pitcairn, DVM, Ph.D. and Susan Hubble Pitcairn (latest version is 2005): Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Secrets to the Natural Health of Dogs and Cats.
For a variety of recipes, including ones for treats and main meals, see: The Healthy Dog Cookbook, by Jonna Anne, with Mary Straus.
Additionally, you might be interested in Dr. Harvey’s Canine Health
866-362-4123, www.drharveys.com. Dr. Harvey’s is a freeze-dried mix of grains, fruits, and veggies that you cook up and to which you add protein (i.e. chicken) and a healthy oil (i.e. olive oil). They have a grain free mixture too.
