Adventures in Puppy Food

DH is suddenly all about being involved with the dogs' diets and vet care, after all of these years, due to Leo's passing and thinking the condition we didn't know he had may have been somewhat manageable with diet (and blood work). It isn't that what we had been feeding (Taste of the Wild High Prairie for the past couple of years, after switching him off of Purina One to get away from the corn, a possible trigger for the fatty tumors he developed) was a problem. Possibly he might have had too much fat in his diet since I'd added Missing Link supplements on top of that (Really, he didn't need it. He was only on that for the past year, and it was more for skin/coat issues, than anything else.) and coconut oil for a while.

Not that those things would have affected a red blood cell issue.

Anyway. Taste of the Wild doesn't make a large breed puppy formula, and Purina One is out because we're going grain-free from the start this time.

The folks we got him from had had him on Royal Canin large breed puppy, a suggestion from their vet, even though they feed the corgis they breed Diamond. Royal Canin is just another Science Diet. Corn. Plus, Kal didn't seem all that interested in eating the bag of food in the puppy pack sent home with him.  It certainly wasn't doing anything for him nutritionally. His growth was exceeding his diet, and he was walking heavily on his pasterns (a dietary thing), instead of keeping his weight on his toes.

I let DH do the research and make the decisions this time.

He chose Blue Freedom Large Breed Puppy, from Blue Buffalo.

Off we went to the nearby Petsmart to acquire a bag.

Imagine our dismay in finding that the store only stocks (or possibly, the company only makes) the large breed puppy food in the GIANT bags.

We didn't even know if the dog would like/eat it yet (friends have tried and failed to get their own dogs to eat this brand, which is why I never bothered), so we just wanted a small bag.

To make matters more frustrating, the company's sales rep was in the store that day, carrying on a lengthy conversation with some other customers- standing right in front of the food we'd been contemplating, in our way.

I at least took advantage of the opportunity to eavesdrop on what she was saying, so I could learn a thing or three.

DH became increasingly more agitated, so we wandered off to the pet ID tag kiosk, to look into getting Kal a tag for his collar.

Kids in the way, messing around with the machine... so it was back to the dog food aisle, where the same group of people were still standing in the same spot...

We ended up reading/comparing a lot of bag labels on various Blue foods, and deciding that, for now, we'd just buy a small bag of their regular Blue Freedom puppy food, see how he liked it, and then I would order the other stuff from Chewy.com, where I get free shipping, no sales tax, the prices are cheaper than in stores and this brand actually costs about $5 less than Taste of the Wild. So, I'll be saving a bit on dog food... at least for a while...

The small bag lasted through yesterday- almost a week. The large breed puppy food arrived yesterday and the ingredients list looks the same- as does the food.

So far, so good.

No thanks to Petsmart.

We didn't like any of the kiosk tags, so I just came home and ordered my usual stainless steel stamped bone from Tagxpress.com, where I've shopped for about 12 years. The cost was the same, always free shipping, and it arrived yesterday.

After less than a week on a decent food, Kal is also walking normally, and is much less clumsy.