Monday, December 24, 2012

Switching dog foods...

So, probably most of you have lamented like I have, about the cost of dog food.  When I see what I pay per month, it's sort of scary.  I think I may spend more on the dogs than me...  I feed Taste of the Wild Pacific Stream.  They all do very well on it.   It is not cheap though.  So, recently, I checked out other foods.  I was in Agway last week, and spoke with the owner of the store, and she suggested I try a brand called "Exclusive".  It has a bag program (where you buy so many bags and get one free), and it also had several different types for different needs.  I took some samples of the high energy version and lamb/rice for my dogs.  I mixed a bit in slowly, and everything seemed pretty copacetic.  I then decided to go ahead and get the high energy and lamb rice- so, two different kinds for the dogs, depending on what they were doing.  I then find out they only make the high energy in 38 lb bags- that's for two dogs... that makes no sense.  But, still, I wanted to try and save money, so I bought an 18 lb bag of the lamb and rice.

When I opened the bag, I could instantly smell that it was stale.  This is never a good sign, as it means they don't move much of it, and well, stale, is that much closer to bad/buggy...  I fed some of it, with the ToTW, and later in the day, I saw that Kylie was scratching her face/ears more, and I also noted, that there was a difference in all the dog's out put...  This all gave me pause.. To me, it's simply not worth it to save maybe $20/month and feed low quality food.  Garbage in, garbage out.  I have been eating better quality food myself, feed it to my cats and sheep, and therefore, not going to cheap on the dogs.  I may try and find a way to add healthy food to their dry food to try and make it last longer... But, in the end, what I did was return the food, and learned my lesson.

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