[NAGDU] Grain vs Other Food

[Marj Schneider]

Hello All,

I don't often post to this list, but thought I would weigh in on this
topic because my experience with grain-free versus foods with grain is
different from others who have posted.

First, I absolutely recommend no one feed a dog food with corn, and
fortunately there are many choices available that weren't around even 10
years ago. Corn is the only grain used in commercial pet food that is
genetically modified and it has been for a long time. Various allergies
and digestive problems can be attributed to it, and I was convinced to
never eat food products myself that include   non-organic corn in its
various forms and to never feed it to my dogs more than 15 years ago. At
the time my Seeing Eye shepherd had chronic ear infections and a
holistic vet suggested corn might be the culprit. There weren't many
non-corn foods available then, but when I switched her food the ear
infections went away, never to return, and I've not had a dog with ear
infections since that time, thanks to not feeding a food with corn.

With my current Seeing Eye shepherd, Fennel, I started off by switching
around among various foods, finally settling on Wellness Core, which is
grain free. Fennel would be very hungry before mealtimes and she stayed
quite thin. I didn't want her under 50 pounds, but it didn't matter how
much I fed, her weight stayed low. When I switched to a grain-containing
version of Wellness, it had more calories, more carbs and she finally
got to 51 pounds.

I was happy with that food, but then this spring a veterinary
ophthalmologist found a small lipid deposit in Fennel's right cornea and
recommended that I keep her on a lower fat diet without any poultry
among its ingredients. Anecdotal evidence has shown that in some dogs
those corneal lipid deposits dissolve on a diet without poultry.

The ophthalmologist had no specific foods to recommend, but seemed to
think there were many to choose from. I found that was not the case,
though I did find the Dog Food Advisor and Chewy.com were very helpful
sites for doing my research. Given what I've learned about what
ingredients are of nutritional value to a dog and which are
controversial, I knew what I didn't want in a food, along with the
requirement for no poultry.

I settled on one of the Taste of the Wild grain-free formulas with beef,
lamb and pork. It seemed like a good solution, but within three weeks of
Fennel eating that food she had lost 10% of her body weight. After I
started adding significant amounts of cooked oats to her meals her
weight bounced back again and I definitely learned my lesson.

I went back to Chewy.com and the Dog Food Advisor and found a Canidae
lamb, oat and rice formula that is affordable and has more calories per
cup than most other foods I looked at. I'm sure hoping this food will be
a good one for Fennel because the only other choice I found was a
similar Wellness formula that costs considerably more. Once you really
look at the ingredients in these foods, most of them, from affordable to
expensive, use poultry as fat or as one of their meats. The options are
more limited than you would think. If, over time, the corneal lipid
deposit doesn't resolve I'll go back to a grain-containing food with
chicken because there are so many more options.

My point is that while the newer grain-free foods seem to benefit many
dogs from the standpoint of potentially reducing inflammation and
providing more of what they need to maintain a healthy weight, not all
dogs will do well on them, just as all dogs don't do well on a raw food
diet. Dogs genetically predisposed to be thin may need more grain-based
carbohydrates to stay healthy. Figuring out the best fit requires doing
homework or at least consulting people who are knowledgeable and being
aware of the ingredients and how they can impact a dog's health. After
all, diet is one aspect of our dogs' health that we have control over
and we should make well informed choices that will be best for our
particular dog.


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