[NAGDU] Grain vs Other Food

[Gabriel Moloney]

i feed my guide taste of the wild and so far i have had no problems.
gabriel
> On 28 Jul 2017, at 13:22, Marj Schneider via NAGDU <nagdu at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 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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