[NAGDU] Grain vs Other Food

[Janell]

I use Taste of the Wild and have had absolutely no problems either.  I do
switch the variety from time to time, but overall I love this brand!!
Janell and Sully

-----Original Message-----
From: NAGDU [mailto:nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Gabriel Moloney
via NAGDU
Sent: Friday, July 28, 2017 7:30 AM
To: NAGDU Mailing List, the National Association of Guide Dog Users
<nagdu at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Gabriel Moloney <gmoloney6467 at googlemail.com>
Subject: Re: [NAGDU] Grain vs Other Food

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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