Premium Food Question

[Corgi411]

My Corgi is about 9 months old now and I have been feeding him Wellness Puppy food pretty much since i took him home when he was 8 weeks old...The problem I had with Wellness was that he just wouldnt eat it right away. He would let it sit in his bowl sometimes for hours before he fealt like eating it..So I decided to switch to Purina Pro Plan puppy food chicken and rice formula. (My mother feeds her dog this)

Now I knew it was a generic food but I thought I would give it a shot. And my puppy absolutely loved it...I could pour it in the bowl and he would come running from another room to eat it he liked it so much...I have been reading reviews and people have been absolutely bashing Purina...Well deserved I guess because the ingredients does have a lot of filler (corn and what not)
Now I am stuck because obviously I want to feed him the best possible food but he doesnt seem to enjoy the Wellness...

Any advice would be great

Doing some research I guess some other brands would be Innova, Canidae, and Solid Gold but I am just afraid my puppy won't eat the "organic" foods.
IS purina that bad for my puppy?

 

[Mordy]

Purina makes foods ranging from bottom of the barrel (e.g. Dog Chow, Beneful) to "not horrible but not great either" (e.g. Pro Plan). In my opinion, all of these foods are a waste of good money on bad ingredients.

Wellness used to be a nice food, but they changed their formulas last year and now it's not all that great anymore.

What you could do is contact several manufacturers for samples, they will usually be happy to send you some. That way your dog can sample different brands without you having to buy a bag.

 

[Corgi411]

Thanks for the reply...I checked out some of my local independent stores at lunch and one suggestion they had was Natural Choice Nutro Lamb and Rice...I checked them out on the web and the indgredients looked very good...I think I may end up trying that

 

[Mordy]

Nutro isn't that much better than Pro Plan. It's also full of fillers and contains very little real meat.

 

[Corgi411]

Uggg...

Maybe I am looking at the wrong ingredients then.I even read your website..I noticed nutro wasnt filled with corn and lots of grain so I thought maybe that was it...Well according to the boards everyone is talking about:

Innova
Canidae
Solid Gold

Maybe I will just stick with one of those

If you have any Brand suggestions I would appreciate it..

Thanks

 

[Mordy]

Check out the Nutro Natural Choice Puppy for example:

Main ingredients:
Lamb meal, rice flour (=grain), rice bran (=grain), rice gluten (=grain), ground rice (=grain), dried beet pulp(=stool conditioner), sunflower oil

The 3 brands you listed are nice, you can also add the Eagle Pack holistic line to that, and for example Pinnacle, California Natural and several others that don't come to mind right now. If you check out the ingredients of those products, you should get a good idea of what's a quality food.

 

[Corgi411]

Thats awesome!!
Thanks for the info

 

[Phoenix the Dog]

I switched my pup to Natural Balance Duck and Potato, and he loves it, plus it's ingredients seem much better (at least I hope, after reading Mordy's site!) And my pup has a lot of food allergies and it has made all the difference in the world! His itching has stopped, he sheds a lot less, his coat is super shiny now and he loves it soooo much!!!! I found it nice because I could find it at my local pet store, I had trouble trying to track down some of the other foods mentioned! They have a website too... http://www.naturalbalanceinc.com/ which talks more about there food and ingredients!

 

[Brattina88]

Some dogs do take a while to fully enjoy the healthier foods. I view it like this: we all like mcdonalds, and just because a salad or something is better for us doesn't mean we'd choose it over a double cheeseburger!
I have a very very picky Shih Tzu, and after being very stubborn for not quite 3 days, she ate my Innova EVO, and now Loves it! She won't eat anything else... unless its raw

 

[PoodleMommy]

My dog eats her Innova (canned) as if it is wonderful.
I dont plan on trying it, so I take her word for it.
You could try that.
Elissa