On Dog Food

On Dog Food
Oct 28th 2007
wolfmoonsleddog
Southeast
Location: Northwest GA
Time - 1:19pm
Temperature: 65 degrees F
Conditions: Clear
Forecast: Clear today and tomorrow. Low of 41 tonight, low of 34 tomorrow night!

Once upon a time my family only had one kind of dog food. It was all neat and tidy in one bin in the basement. We had two dogs and they only ate that one kind of food.

Times have changed. Now we have about five different kinds of dog food sitting around in bins or in bags all over the basement. I no longer feed treats after the poisoned dog treat scare (I had a bag of the re-called biscuits!!) so we don’t have jars of them sitting around anymore. But there are cans of salmon in the shower stall of the guest bathroom. As well as a big bag of ProPlan for athletic dogs.

It’s amazing how difficult it is to find dog food that does not have corn as the #1 ingredient. Regular dog food that most people feed is corn-based (read the list of ingredients on your dog food bags) and this might be okay for a house pet who doesn’t do much except lie around inside and go for walks. But if you have a dog who runs and pulls and uses up a lot of energy, as sled dogs do, you need a food with meat as the #1 ingredient. Even supposedly-good brands have corn-based food. At Petco several years ago, I read the list of ingredients on every single kind of food they had. Out of all the dozens of brands and types, only one listed meat as the #1 ingredient. It was either Iams or Eukanuba, I don’t remember which. Oddly enough, both brands have corn as the base for most of their foods. The meat-based food was their formula for athletic dogs.

My vet introduced me to ProPlan. I don’t know about all their foods, but the athletic dog formula has chicken as the #1 ingredient. So far, ProPlan has worked really, really well and Calypso LOVES it. I often mix it with canned salmon since I rarely just feed dry food. I hear there is a Blackwood distributor nearby and I may try that sometime. Blackwood is another good brand for working dogs. So are Redpaw and Eagle Pack, but they aren’t available around here.

The other dog food bags sitting around are diet food for Wilson and a corn-based food for April. We also have smaller bags of some “Natural” something that my Mom got free with a rebate. I think April is eating that too.

Oh, one more thing. Never, ever get a musher on the subject of dog food. We can go on and on and on about the subject…