# dog food



## sgc (Oct 21, 2007)

Acana. It's a good non-grain food but a little hard to find. The normal pet store chains don't carry it.


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## zx10r2004 (Sep 24, 2005)

I switched to blue buffalo and don't have no complaints. 


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## spotdog14 (Sep 28, 2011)

We feed all of our dogs Pro Plan, I really like the "sport" series.


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## KEITH207 (Feb 17, 2005)

Info in Purina Pro Plan

http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/dog_food_reviews/showproduct.php?product=1400&cat=all

Pro Plan also contains "animal digest" (look on the label) which means the digested food left in the intestines of any animal, aka poop. A very poor ingredient in a dog food. 

A professor of veterinary medicine from Pen State gave a very good talk on dog food at last years Lions county supplys open house. He said to look for meat meal products as the first ingredients in a dry dog food. Whole products (chicken, lamb, and beef) have the water still in the protein and skew the listing ingredients because they are in order of weight, more water = higher on the ingredient list. 

He also said the minerals had to be digestible as stated earlier and the preservatives used must be safe. Many dog foods can use preservatives that are banned for human consumption because of cancer risks. He also said it is a good idea to change the food you feed your dog or more importantly the protean in the food at least three times a year. The different amino acids found in the different protean bases (chicken, lamb, beef, venison, buffalo, and duck) all have benefits to the animals muscle tissues. 

I feed a combination of half & half Chicken Soup for a Dog Lovers Soul and Taste of the Wild, many different proteins in one bowl of food.


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## WestCoastHunter (Apr 3, 2008)

KEITH207 said:


> Pro Plan also contains "animal digest" (look on the label) which means the digested food left in the intestines of any animal, aka poop. A very poor ingredient in a dog food.


Coyotes and wolves must have it bad then.


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## k9wernet (Oct 15, 2007)

KEITH207 said:


> "animal digest" (look on the label) which means the digested food left in the intestines of any animal, aka poop


The only thing that's made out of poop is your understanding of ingredients 



> As defined by the AAFCO, it is material which results from chemical and/or enzymatic hydrolysis of clean and undecomposed animal tissue. The animal tissues used shall be exclusive of hair, horns, teeth, hooves and feathers, except in such trace amounts as might occur unavoidably in good factory practice and shall be suitable for animal feed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_digest


It is essentially broth.

Or in the words of everyone's favorite dentist/dog food expert:



> Animal digest is a chemically hydrolyzed mixture of animal by-products that is usually sprayed onto the surface of a dry kibble to improve its taste. http://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/dog-food-reviews/purina-pro-plan-sport/


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## KEITH207 (Feb 17, 2005)

Just passing on info from a professor at Penn State from his seminar.


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## whiterock (Feb 15, 2013)

k9wernet said:


> The only thing that's made out of poop is your understanding of ingredients
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Yep. Now it's called "natural flavoring." Same stuff just the name was changed to avoid people making the intuitive but erroneous conclusion that "digest" = poop. 

The term digest arises from the way flavorings are made - some kind of plant or animal protein is put in a vat , enzymes are added.....a few hours later you have a "broth" that is highly palatable to dogs. 

Flavorings are critical to meal-constructed foods (i.e. the ones with no whole meats). Meals are flavorless.


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## sgc (Oct 21, 2007)

A lot of what Keith207 said is true; especially the part about meat meal as the first ingredient being better than the meat itself due to water content. Also, I would not consider Purina ProPlan a good food & quit feeding it years ago. It's not bad, but it doesn't have enough meat in it, especially for the price. One of the reasons the price of Purina is high, as compared to the ingredients it has, is because of the advertising Purina does. If you look at the ingredients in ProPlan, you might as well go buy Costco food. The good foods are high priced. I would say most good foods are going to run approximately $50 for 30 - 35 lbs. Of course you could feed raw, which they say is the best. Another reason some feed Purina is because of the club points and $'s they get back. Again, real good foods are going to cost more.


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## MandJ (Oct 10, 2012)

We also switched to victor. Grain free version. Good ingredients. Good price, rated highly. Worth a look. 

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## whiterock (Feb 15, 2013)

sgc said:


> A lot of what Keith207 said is true; especially the part about meat meal as the first ingredient being better than the meat itself due to water content. Also, I would not consider Purina ProPlan a good food & quit feeding it years ago. It's not bad, but it doesn't have enough meat in it, especially for the price. One of the reasons the price of Purina is high, as compared to the ingredients it has, is because of the advertising Purina does. If you look at the ingredients in ProPlan, you might as well go buy Costco food. The good foods are high priced. I would say most good foods are going to run approximately $50 for 30 - 35 lbs. Of course you could feed raw, which they say is the best. Another reason some feed Purina is because of the club points and $'s they get back. Again, real good foods are going to cost more.


Would rather strenuously disagree with this but will come back later when I'm on laptop rather than iPhone.


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## crosswind (Sep 1, 2004)

www.dogfoodadvisor.com

This is one of several out there. Take 10 minutes and educate yourself.


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## spotdog14 (Sep 28, 2011)

whiterock said:


> Yep. Now it's called "natural flavoring." Same stuff just the name was changed to avoid people making the intuitive but erroneous conclusion that "digest" = poop.
> 
> The term digest arises from the way flavorings are made - some kind of plant or animal protein is put in a vat , enzymes are added.....a few hours later you have a "broth" that is highly palatable to dogs.
> 
> Flavorings are critical to meal-constructed foods (i.e. the ones with no whole meats). Meals are flavorless.


Not trying to argue, but if thats the worst that is in the food I feed my dogs its most likely the best thing they have eaten all day. My labs daily diet consists of dirt, random wood in the backyard, random poo from the backyard, tennis balls, various cotton cloths, etc.


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## k9wernet (Oct 15, 2007)

WestCoastHunter said:


> Coyotes and wolves must have it bad then.


Yessiree. Wild dogs are offal eaters. Kind of shoots a hole in the "dogs need human grade meat" argument, when they're slurping half-digested vegetative matter out of a deer's stomach and intestines.



crosswind said:


> www.dogfoodadvisor.com
> 
> This is one of several out there. Take 10 minutes and educate yourself.


I actually like that site better than the other one listed in this thread, but you should know that the guy who runs it isn't a veterinarian or even a nutritionist by trade... he's a dentist. That fact doesn't undermine everything you read on there -- there's a lot of good information -- but I'd take it with a grain of salt and do further research if you're really interested.


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## dauber (Jan 11, 2010)

spotdog14 said:


> Not trying to argue, but if thats the worst that is in the food I feed my dogs its most likely the best thing they have eaten all day. My labs daily diet consists of dirt, random wood in the backyard, random poo from the backyard, tennis balls, various cotton cloths, etc.


 
:lol::lol:I hear ya spotdog! My pup made a well timed leap to the kitchen counter and nabbed a fresh slice of "fatty" last weekend:yikes: just before I could snap a picture! Guess the Dr. Tim's he gets is short of pork sausage and bacon eh! His new nickname is "lil fatty".


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## k9wernet (Oct 15, 2007)

dauber said:


> :lol::lol:I hear ya spotdog! My pup made a well timed leap to the kitchen counter and nabbed a fresh slice of "fatty" last weekend:yikes: just before I could snap a picture! Guess the Dr. Tim's he gets is short of pork sausage and bacon eh! His new nickname is "lil fatty".


As we pulled into our cabin on our trip to KY earlier this month, my wife called me and asked, "did you move the two sticks of butter I put out on the counter to soften last night?"

"Nope..."

I opened a crate to let Chief do his business and it immediately became apparent where the missing butter ended up!


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## dauber (Jan 11, 2010)

k9wernet said:


> As we pulled into our cabin on our trip to KY earlier this month, my wife called me and asked, "did you move the two sticks of butter I put out on the counter to soften last night?"
> 
> "Nope..."
> 
> I opened a crate to let Chief do his business and it immediately became apparent where the missing butter ended up!


:lol:Butterbuns:lol:


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## WestCoastHunter (Apr 3, 2008)

k9wernet said:


> As we pulled into our cabin on our trip to KY earlier this month, my wife called me and asked, "did you move the two sticks of butter I put out on the counter to soften last night?"
> 
> "Nope..."
> 
> I opened a crate to let Chief do his business and it immediately became apparent where the missing butter ended up!


Mine think these are tasty little snacks...

http://www.purinastore.com/tidy-cat...tore=default&gclid=CIbCpNC717UCFUeCQgod5CYAHQ

Seriously though, I always find the responses to these questions interesting. I saw a similar thread on a different forum recently and a bunch of the people who responded said they loved Taste of the Wild for their dogs but got priced out of it until Costco started carrying their own variant of it. Fromm dog food was the other big one.

I've been feeding PPP for several months now and it has worked just fine. I made the switch when the big Diamond recall occurred and I was feeding Kirkland Brand food from Costco (which is made by Diamond).

That said, I got curious and bought a bag of Costco's Nature's Domain (aka Taste of the Wild) and will see how it works. If I get good results I'll ditch PPP again if not for any reason other than the cost savings and the ingredients appear to be good. 

All of Costco's stuff is made by Diamond at the end of the day (this includes their TOTW variant). I've been leery of that but someone pointed out to me that most all of Diamond's recalls have been voluntary, that the FDA has not had to get involved, which tends to lend credence to the idea that they are on top of things. Purina recalls (and they are few) tend to be mandated by the FDA from what I can tell.


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## cross3700 (Apr 7, 2010)

k9wernet said:


> As we pulled into our cabin on our trip to KY earlier this month, my wife called me and asked, "did you move the two sticks of butter I put out on the counter to soften last night?"
> 
> "Nope..."
> 
> I opened a crate to let Chief do his business and it immediately became apparent where the missing butter ended up!


Been there, done that with a beagle. It wasn't pretty.


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## WestCoastHunter (Apr 3, 2008)

Sorry, one last thing. I keep seeing cancer concerns in these threads too.

While I agree that food can play a role in that as much as it does in humans, I would argue that breeding and environmental influences play a much bigger role.

My wife's family has cancer riddled throughout it. Everyone dies of it. But in my family I can name precisely one person who has had cancer at all and died from it. I don't think that is coincidence anymore than I think it's coincidence that some lines of Pointers die young from cancer while others don't.

Understand, if you can afford it and/or need a "high quality" food for your dogs like Dr. Tims by all means, buy it. I just think that for most of us it's making a mountain out of a mole hill and that there are other more important factors that lead to a long life for your dog.

Many dogs live well into their teens eating generic store bought food. I don't recommend that either, but it's the case.


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## WestCoastHunter (Apr 3, 2008)

k9wernet said:


> I have a dog that would routinely (as in nightly) choke as he inhaled his daily ration. I've never seen anything like it. I don't think I could make a bowl of food disappear any faster with my shop-vac.
> 
> Solution?
> 
> ...


Do you feed them in their crates Kevin?

Slim started kicking the other dogs out of their bowls and we had some brawls in the last few months. Crating them at feeding time stopped that but more to the point, they now eat much more slowly and calmly than they ever have.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## k9wernet (Oct 15, 2007)

crosswind said:


> The uncooked meat is actually close to 80 percent water. Meal is not. during the cooking process 80 percent of that chicken evaporates.


What exactly evaporates? It's the water evaporates, not the nutritional content.

So if you start with a chunk of meat that's say 80% water, 15% protein, and 5% other stuff (numbers are completely made up), and you take out the water -- now you've got a chunk of meat that's 66% protein, albeit a much lighter one.

And if the end of the day, the Guaranteed Analysis says 30% protein -- that's based on the final product, right? 

As long as you're happy with the ingredients, I'm not sure the meat vs. meal difference is that significant.

If I'm just not getting it, please educate me.


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## k9wernet (Oct 15, 2007)

WestCoastHunter said:


> Do you feed them in their crates Kevin


Not exactly, but they eat one at a time in the laundry room. It's impossible to control portions without separating them. I used to think the pointer was a food-vacuum, but this GSP puts her to shame.


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## crosswind (Sep 1, 2004)

k9wernet said:


> What exactly evaporates? It's the water evaporates, not the nutritional content.
> 
> So if you start with a chunk of meat that's say 80% water, 15% protein, and 5% other stuff (numbers are completely made up), and you take out the water -- now you've got a chunk of meat that's 66% protein, albeit a much lighter one.
> Right except that you have lost 80 percent of the weight, therefore its not the number one ingredient. It moves way down the list.
> ...


 The dog food debates always interest me for the same reason. I try to learn anything I can about it. 
I was one of those people that thought any name brand dog food was fine to feed my dogs. 
But when I started feeding 30 to 40 of them and seeing how dogs reacted to some foods and watching the way my trial dogs performaned on some of those name brand foods, I was basically forced to do the research to get the most bang for the buck.
Dig into the research, it is an eye opener.
The guys that get on here and claim they have fed ole fido so n so dog food for 15 years, and he did fine on it. Are not much of a guage.


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## k9wernet (Oct 15, 2007)

crosswind said:


> I was one of those people that thought any name brand dog food was fine to feed my dogs.


Same here. I started by feeding my dogs the best food money could buy. Then kids came along, and for a short time we went with just about the cheapest food money could by.

It's true that you get out what you put in. When I fed crap food, I got crap performance. Less drive. Less endurance. Less stamina.

I switched to a mid-grade food in August and saw almost immediate results. My 8 y/o pointer looks and runs better than she has in 3 years.

Just like discussions of "best breed," these discussions of "best food" get under my skin for 3 reasons:

1) All dogs are different;
2) All guys' standards and expectations are different; and
3) There just HAS to be a point of diminishing returns on dog food. The overall perception seems to be that expensive = better. Feed your dog caviar and finely ground $100 bills and see where that gets you. 

THIS discussion (meat vs meal) is an interesting one, but I'm skeptical as to the results. If it turns out that a cheaper option is in fact a healthier option... do you thing more guys will turn to mid-priced foods? My guess is no.


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## dr tim (May 14, 2012)

Let's see if I can hit the Q's here;

Meat meal is a concentrated source of amino acids and there are many grades of meat meals, about 20 for chicken alone. The level of ash in the meal often will denote the quality of the protein in that ash is mineral, minerals are bone left over in a meat meal. Thus, low ash means more care was taken to remove the flesh from the bone and the flesh is what we want in the food, not the minerals. Dogs have a requirement for about 2% ash in their diet to cover their needs for calcium/phosphorus and other traces minerals. Above that is wasted space or the true filler in a food. 

So meals have about 10% or less water versus meat has about 70 % water. What someone was referring to was label reading in order of ingredient listing, not the guaranteed analysis. Ingredient labels are supposed to list ingredients in order of most to least in the food before the formula went into the extruder and dryer. After this, much water is lost from the ingredient mix but you have a end kibble with about 10% water. Going into the extruder the whole mix may have been 30% water or more. And when you do add real meat versus meal it is added as a slurry but only about 30% water added to the weight of the meat used. You can do the math there but one can see after drying the real meat ingredients could possibly be much further down the list of ingredients, often behind the corn gluten meal that is in the food hiding at number 5, for instance. Many of you know this, I am sure.

To me a quality dog food is made up of proteins derived from other animals, not plants. That is how I formulated these diets-heavy animal sources of protein as the dogs perform much better on that. Much better. Momentum, for example, is a 94% animal derived protein food meaning of the 35% total protein in the food, 94% of that 35% comes from an animal. 
The next most important part is the actual digestibility of the starches in the dog food as this is the most common cause of soft stools under stress-inadequately cooked starches such as corn or rice.

High fat diets also play a huge part with a dog performing to its maximum. Not only high fat but the types of fat can also influence it. Even in higher heat work outs this idea does work very well. And in the cold as the Iditarod starts tomorrow in AK. That is where I learned to feed dogs and the methods should be very similar to a hunting dog that is talked about here.

Some more expensive foods are definitely worth it in a sporting dog but a key is the food should have been built for use in a sporting dog. They have some different needs dietary and digestively. Taking a food that costs 80 dollars a bag and using on a sporting dog will probably fail unless you add all sorts of supplements or that food was intended for use in these arenas. Performance of that food will show itself quickly when put through the tests.

Let me know if I missed any q's or there are more. Glad to offer my 2 cents.


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## Steelheadfred (May 4, 2004)

crosswind said:


> The dog food debates always interest me for the same reason. I try to learn anything I can about it.
> I was one of those people that thought any name brand dog food was fine to feed my dogs.
> But when I started feeding 30 to 40 of them and seeing how dogs reacted to some foods and watching the way my trial dogs performaned on some of those name brand foods, I was basically forced to do the research to get the most bang for the buck.
> Dig into the research, it is an eye opener.
> The guys that get on here and claim they have fed ole fido so n so dog food for 15 years, and he did fine on it. Are not much of a guage.


What do you feed Scott?

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## 2ESRGR8 (Dec 16, 2004)

Steelheadfred said:


> What do you feed Scott?


See post #17.


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## whiterock (Feb 15, 2013)

crosswind said:


> Your above explanation, in my mind anyway, does not add up. The uncooked meat is actually close to 80 percent water. Meal is not. during the cooking process 80 percent of that chicken evaporates. Meal does not.
> My thinking is you can add water to a meal, cook it and dehydrate it and you are still gonna have all your meal back.
> Cook the meat and you loose most of it.
> If the process started with precooked meat as the main igredient, I would possible think different....


you're still not seeing the big picture. So you have a meal based food. You add some real meat to it. the wet weight of the real meat throws it up first on the ingredient list. exactly how does this downgrade the overall quality of the ration? you have added meat to the diet, have you not?

Dr Tim put up an excellent long post. Meals are an exceedingly efficient way to get meat protein into a ration. But, again, look at the big picture. If you had to feed either A) meat, or B) meal, which would you choose to feed? Yes, you would need to feed less meal, but meat provides more total nutrition unless you ascribe to the theory that cooking has no effect on the ingredients being cooked. Most importantly - meats and meals are BOTH good ingredients. It's not really germane to suggest that one is better than the other. They both have value as petfood ingredients. They just bring different things to the table. Most importantly, meals are not 300% better than meats. that's like saying frozen concentrate is 300% better than oranges as a source for orange juice.

My point in all this is not that meat is superior to meals or vice versa. Rather, it's to serve the larger point that is key to understanding petfood rations and all other ingredients in them - it's not the ingredient, it's how it's used. And in particular, customers are often so gobsmacked by the "meals are 300% more dense than meats" that they actually proceed on the assumption that meat is an inferior ingredient. Not so. My company feeds a lot of sled dogs. We actually designed a ration for them. Some sleddoggers feed a raw meat, with kibble added in to add some energy and micronutrition. So do some of the greyhound folks. A group of them here in my home town actually bought a rendering plant and make a frozen raw product designed to be mixed with kibble. And in the frozen raw industry, most products have at least 5% "other" content, fruits & veggies & carbs added in for micro nutrient balance.

So having said that, why do we use meats & why do we use meals?

Well, meals are efficient ways to deliver protein to a ration (see Dr. Tim's post.) But meals, like any ingredient, have cons that come along with the pros. Meals are flavorless. So when you make that first decision to run with a meal based ration, you have to always have palatability in mind. The guys using corn & wheat don't have to worry so much because corn & wheat are palatable to dogs. But the guy using rice, barley & oatmeal (the standard mix for Chick/Rice rations) don't get much help with palatability from their carbs. Doesn't matter how good the ration is, if the dog won't it it........

Meals are the primary source of ash in any petfood. They are cooked twice. Ash is undigestible. You can see in Dr. Tim's giving a nod to this in his ration design when he uses low-ash meal as his first ingredient. This is an incredibly expensive ingredient, typically used in cat foods. Cats require higher overall protein levels than dogs. It's really hard to get extruded kibbles into the 30% protein range without use of meals, but with the use of meals comes ash. Ergo the need for low-ash meal.

What is low-ash meal? High grade By-product meal is cooked off of mostly neck, wing & backs (NWB). This is differentiated from meals cooked off of remnant meats left on thighs, breasts & legs (TBL) because the NWB sourcing has a lot of small bones and connective tissues that tend to turn to ash more quickly than meat. Ergo, meals made from NWB has higher ash content than meals made from TBL. So we differentiate. NBW is by product meal; TBL is chicken meal. Low ash would be meals made directly from breast, thigh and leg meat so no bones or connective tissue are involved in the process, thus removing from the mix the parts that most quickly turn to ash. So you are feeding meals that could otherwise be on the grill. Expensive.

Lastly, I'd like to address one latent assumption that is common in the better petfood part of the world, most often heard something along these lines: "Dogs are carnivores; they descend from wolves. They don't need grains or veggies. They need meat."

To this I respond - "ok. so where do Chihuahuas come from?" This is to underscore a larger point. Dogs are indeed domesticated from wolves, coyotes, foxes, jackal, etc....that hung around our campfires millenia ago. But domestication itself brings one huge reality to the equation: for 9,950 of the last 10,000 years, dogs have only eaten what has fallen off our dinner table.) They are VERY well adapted to eat grains, veggies, etc.... The problem is not that they cannot tolerate those things, it's that they like us need a balanced ration. They do not do well on "corn, corn gluten meal, whole grain ground wheat, chicken byproduct meal" rations that are so predominant in the cost oriented part of the petfood market. That is a 75% grain diet. Humans don't do well on that kind of diet either. Back when dogs ate table scraps, we didn't hear much about allergies & intolerances. They only became a factor after we started extruding petfoods.

The rub is..."what's the balance." And thus the great debate. I know dogs that live & hunt well on Dog Chow. And I know dogs that can't make a tootsie roll on anything that costs less than $2/lb. And I have in my sales folder flyers touting the benefits of both types of rations & everything in between, to include organic, gluten free, gmo free, grain free, etc..... There is a lot of quality out there. There is no one single ration that is superior. And there is no one best way to feed a dog, just like there is no one collar that fits every dog. Chihuahas and Great Danes may have a common ancestor many thousands of years ago, but that's about all they have in common.....

I believe active athletes, dogs that see the roading harness thrice per week and horseback handlers on weekends, need some carbs in their ration, for the same reason that you won't see olympic marathon runners on the atkins diet. I have not tried my dogs on raw diets versus the chick/rice rations I feed. Latter works well for me. And that's what's most important. If something that isn't supposed to work well for you actually does work well for you, congratulations, you are in a good place. Just make sure you are feeding a clean ration with natural preservatives & probiotics & all those little goodies. Those things help dogs live longer, and that will keep you longer in that good place.


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