Izzy's Future Food...

Ok, so, I have two questions about Izzy's food in the future (I need to finish off a 20 lb bag before I get new food for her).

First: If she's getting fixed next weekend, does she need to be switched to adult food or can she stay on puppy food until she reaches adult size?

Second: I found this AMAZING pet store that is literally a half mile away that carries everything I'd ever want to feed Izzy and I have a few options in my price range. I was hoping someone could point me to the best food for a puppy with no known food allergies and hasn't had a bad reaction to food outside of bright yellow stools on Nutro Ultra Puppy.

My options as far as food for her future switch are: Taste of the Wild, Canidae, Solid Gold, and California Naturals. All input is appreciated. My main aim as far as food pricing is around $35-40 for a 30-35lb bag of food but lower is great and up to $5 higher is ok too.

Thanks for your help!

I wouldn't recommend Canidae...not sure about the rest I feed Kirkland from Costco.

What breed is Izzy?

For most dogs, I'd say you can go ahead and switch to adult food whenever you finish up the old bag of food. Generally speaking, opinions are still mixed about whether you should EVER have to feed puppy food to a puppy, as there seems to be no real nutritional advantage if you're feeding a premium food.

To me, TOTW, Solid Gold, and CN are all about the same, meaning I can't tell you which one would be best for your dog since they're all good. Some dogs will do better on one than on another, but that's an individual dog thing, and you'll just have to figure it out on trial and error. JMO.

Although California Natural didn't work for my dogs, I know lots of people love this food. I'd go with any of the foods you mentioned above with exception to Canidae.

Izzy is a Heinz 57 mutter with possible Collie or Shepherd background thus my lack of mentioning it. Since she'll be at least a medium dog, I know I don't need small breed or xLarge breed foods.

Why is Canidae so bad? I know they changed their formula but if a dog has no allergies what ill affects would it have?

I think I'd go with taste of the wild, it's grain free and as far as I know I have not heard complaints. solid Gold varies greatly in quality depending on what formula you feed. California natural is pretty good but make sure you get a formula that has a meat first, not rice (one is rice & lamb and the other is Lamb & Rice, go with lamb & rice), but TOTW is the only grain free one, though it still has potatoes but that's not too bad.

Canidae really increased the grain content of their food, more grains makes a lesser food.

Oh, I forgot to add Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover's Soul to the list... Sorry guys!

Canidae changed there products and also went up in price. And the bag size changed. Overall, they made alot of people mad and dogs seemed to do very bad on the new formula (including my dogs).

Since then we've gone from Dog Lover's Gold (the same as the *OLD* Canidae - dog did great on this food, but we had to drive over an hour to buy it and they only sold it in 35lb bags), Sam's Exceed (low quality but was "okay" with raw).

Now we are on Diamond Naturals and I'm REALLY happy with the price and great quality I'm getting. I also feed raw once a day.

TOTW (Taste of The Wild) is a very good food and a few members here swear by it. We tried it for a while, dogs did great. But the only way I could buy it was online and shipping was outragous. I would definitely recommend it

About the puppy food thing. How old is she? I switched Blaze (my Border Collie) pup over to adult food at 6 months old.

I also feed my guys raw once a day. I've mainly done chicken and turkey necks but the dogs love it and its very simple.

Izzy gets a chunk of meat each night when we're cooking our dinner. That's been mostly venison and beef so far but we need to go shopping when I get my scholarship check.

Anyways, Izzy is going to be 13 weeks old on Wednesday. She'll be getting fixed (per her rescue/adoption contract) next weekend and I'd read somewhere that after fixing your dog it is sometimes alright to switch at the same time to adult dog food. Most of the foods I was looking at (like TotW) had "for all life stages" written on the bag so I figure it doesn't really matter if I pick one of those.

Right now it looks like I'm choosing between Chicken Soup and TotW. I might have to look and see if there is a costco nearby to find kirklands though.

Oh, so she's only 3 months? I would wait then. Unless it's an ALS (All Life States) food.

Feeding just the meat is good. But bone will also help her. Keeps the teeth clean and many other things.

The meat we have right now is venison from my dad's hunting this season so it's been cut off the bone already and the ground beef is... ground beef. However, the new pet store I found offers a raw diet so I may look in to their meaty bone prices. Is it ok to supplement a dry diet with a meaty bone or two a week with some chunks of some sort of meat each night? Since it's not her main diet I'm not sure about needing to get her green tripe and whatnot for her digestive flora.

Yes, it is very much okay to supplement with raw bones/meat a few times a week. I feed kibble one meal, then raw the next meal in a day.

You can add organ meat, too, without hurting her. Just make sure it's not too much.