admin answers:

First stop should be the vet.

Second, should be a higher quality dog food. Beneful is absolute /crap/. Purina One isn’t a good quality dog food either.

Not all pet food is made equally. A lot of it is full of corn, by-products, dyes, unhealthy preservatives, filler grains and all sorts of nasty stuff. A lot of pet food companies are perfectly happy to the dump cheap leftovers and things that aren’t safe for human consumption (from human food processing plants) into their foods. Will it kill your dog? No, it has to be nutritionally complete and safe to even be marketed. Is it healthy? Not by a long shot.

Corn is a low quality ingredient you never want to see in your pet food. Corn and low quality grains are two of the biggest culprits when it comes to food allergies in our pets.

Thankfully, there are some excellent dog foods being made these days that include organic, human grade ingredients rather than trash not fit for human consumption.

Examples of low quality foods to avoid: Anything you can find in a grocery store will be low end, Purina, Iams, Eukanuba, Science Diet, Royal Canin, Pedigree, Kibbles n’ Bits, Beneful, Ol’Roy.

Examples of high quality foods to look for: Innova, Wellness, Solid Gold, Canidae All Life Stages, Fromm Four Star, Merrick, GO Natural, Nature’s Variety Prairie, Nature’s Logic, Artemis Fresh Mix, Timberwolf Organics.

Although the high quality foods are more expensive, you’re getting what you’re paying for. Less filler material and higher quality ingredients means more concentrated nutrients… This means you typically need to feed far less of the high quality food than you would of the low quality one. Which also means less poop!

Seriously on a budget? Two of the most affordable of the higher quality foods would be Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover’s Soul and Canidae All Life Stages.

Before following your vet’s food recommendation, keep in mind that vets get /very/ little nutritional training during their schooling. Besides that, what training they /do/ get is usually sponsored or taught by… You guessed it, the crappy pet food companies! They also often get kickbacks from the companies for pushing these products at their clinics (Science Diet, Royal Canin etc.)

A great option is to go with an entirely grain-free diet. Many of the high quality foods now put out grain-free formulas. Some good grain-free diets include: Innova EVO, Wellness CORE, Blue Wilderness, Nature’s Variety Instinct, Orijen, Horizon Legacy, Canidae Grain Free All Life Stages, Fromm Surf & Turf, Now!, GO Natural Grain Free, Sold Gold Barking At The Moon, Ziwipeak, and Taste of the Wild.

Some pretty decent foods can even be found in common pet stores. Petsmart carries Blue Buffalo products (such as the excellent grain free diet Blue Wilderness). Petco carries Wellness, Solid Gold, Natural Balance, Eagle Pack Holistic Select, Blue Buffalo, Castor & Pollux Organix, Pinnacle, and Halo.

If you can’t find a food, most of the high quality dog food brands have websites with store locators on them that will help you find the store closest to you which supplies their products. Simply type the dog food brand’s name into Google, go to their website, and type your zip code into their store locator.

Another option, if you can’t find anywhere around you that sells good foods, is to order your pet food online. Here’s an excellent place to do so: http://www.petfooddirect.com/store/

Remember that foods should be switched gradually (mixing the new slowly in with the old over the period of about week or so), especially when switching to a higher quality one, so as not to upset tummies. For example:
Days 1 & 2: 75% old food, 25% new food
Days 3 & 4: 50% old food, 50% new food
Days 5 & 6: 25% old food, 75% new food
Day 7: 0% old food, 100% new food

Another option for feeding dogs is to feed raw. This is something that should be thoroughly researched before being attempted:
http://www.rawfed.com/ (RawFed)
http://www.rawlearning.com/ (Jane Anderson’s Raw Learning Site)
http://rawfeddogs.net/ (Raw Fed Dogs)
http://www.rawmeatybones.com/ (Raw Meaty Bones)
http://rawfed.com/myths/preymodel.html (Raw Prey Model Diet Vs. BARF Diet)
http://community.livejournal.com/rawdogs/profile/ (Raw Dogs Livejournal Community, excellent raw feeding information on the profile page and overall helpful community for raw feeding questions)
http://www.rawfed.com/myths/index.html (Myths About Raw Feeding)

Also remember that freefeeding (leaving food down) is the fast lane to canine obesity. Make sure to have scheduled feeding times loosely based on the feeding guidelines on your dog’s food. Adult dogs are typically fed two meals a day.

More on dog food:
http://www.dogfoodproject.com/index.php?page=main (Learn how to determine the quality of your dog’s food.)
http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/dog_food_reviews/ (Dog food reviews. Four stars is a decent food, five stars is a great food, and six stars is an excellent food.)

Darksong~

admin answers:

You’ve assumed he vomited and pooped it all out. Sounds like something got stuck on the way through…very common possibility…he needs to be taken into the vet immediately if this is the case. They’ll x-ray to find where the blockage is and do what’s necessary to save his life. In the future, when you know that your dog has eaten something that could present a blockage issue it’s best to take them immediately to have the vet induce vomiting…it’s cheaper and easier to get it out before it enters the intestinal track, where usually surgery is the only way to remove the blockage. Also in the future, don’t give him stuffed animals that he can eat the stuffing if he’s a stronger chewer and tears them apart…take them away immediately when he’s ripped their heads off before he can eat the stuffing or think about getting toys specifically made for rougher chewers – they even sell what they call “skins” which is unstuffed stuffed toys.

Don’t wait…a blockage can be fatal.
Good luck.

admin answers:

Ole” Roy is a very, very poor quality food and it is not at all unusual for a dog to get sick from eating it. It is like giving your dog gravy soaked sawdust.

I would stay away from Beneful as well. This is also a poor quality food. A dog should not be eating a food that is full of grains especially corn, wheat & soy. A dog needs meat & meat protein. This is what it is designed to eat, process & get nutrition from not grains. Feeding a cheap food means you have to feed more and the dog produces more poop. It takes up to 3 times more of a poor quality, grain laden food for a dog to get proper nutrition then it does of a good quality meat based food. Poor quality foods can cause vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, paw chewing, flaking skin, itchiness, waxy ears, ear infections, bad breath, weight loss, obesity, etc
A food for a dog should have meat as the first 2-3 ingredients and should NOT contain corn, wheat, soy, sugars, dyes or by products.
Some good choices…chicken soup for the dog lover’s soul, canidae als, canidae before grain, taste of the wild, wellness core, wellness super5 mix chicken,Innova, Solid Gold just to name a few.

****vets are wonderful and I respect most. I have worked for/with them for 36 years, but most vets have no idea when it comes to nutrition. They only get general classes that take in everything from cats to rats, dogs to hogs.Because of this they are sadly lacking when it comes ot recommending foods and unfortunately tend to recommend foods they hear the most about. Sadly these foods are low quality, grain laden foods that aren’t suitable for dogs, they are better suited for goats. Your dog “may” appear healthy on these low quality foods, but they aren’t getting the proper nutrition.”