Vets pushing their food

When we first got Rocky (almost 14 years ago) we took him to a new vet, who was recommended to us by our neighbours, that gave us a whole "puppy care" booklet, including foods the vet would recommend. It was nearly laughable: pro plan, pedigree, science diet and a few other not so great foods. Ya, no thanks.

Other than that, none of the other vets have ever tried to push any foods on us. Besides the first vet, all the others have basically said "if it's working for your dog then keep doing what you're doing."

We sell prescription Hill's food (mostly urinary stuff, allergy stuff, and gastrointestinal stuff) but not the non-prescription stuff. Mostly we don't encourage people to change what they're feeding unless it is truly horrible quality and that is visible in the dog (stinky skin, etc). And even then we point them toward the "whatever they sell at the petstore, not the grocery store" brands.

Our Hill's rep comes in with propaganda about how other brands are so terrible. Blue Buffalo tends to be a frequent target. I just find that so rude.

The vets i use to work for seriously pushed Purina and Science Diet, i got in SERIOUS trouble at work because i recomended one of the grain free dog foods to someone, & told them to research dog foods, and to look at the ingredients.. SMH. One of the vets was blaming a GSD's illness on "that blue buffalo food"

FWIW, Blue Buffalo DOES seem to cause a lot of issues. I know of a few vets who hear of a lot of GI problems while eating that brand. And purely anecdotal on my part, but I've read a lot about dog food on the internet and other forums (probably more than is healthy :rofl1 and BB is a common food fed when people complain of any GI, digestive, stomach-type problems. Not to mention that it was linked to killing dogs (overdose of Vitamin K). AND it's manufactured in like 5-6 different plants. To me, it's just another marketing company.

My vets have never said anything about the foods I feed. The topic of SciDie RX came up briefly for Auggie's UTI issues, but we both quickly agreed that is the ABSOLUTE last resort, because neither of us thought very highly of the ingredients. It's never come up again.

I did get a weird look when I said I sometimes feed the dogs raw chicken, and a "Would YOU eat raw chicken?" "Does the coyote cook his rabbit?" I asked.

That must just be how they roll lol. When I went to a Hills seminar a couple months ago, they were constantly ripping on Blue Buffalo. I don't understand why they're their target, but yeah I thought it was super unprofessional.


We have a lot of clients that feed Fromm and the other techs are always like "what is it with that Fromm stuff" lol. I had a new puppy owner ask me what my opinion of a raw diet was, I told her I thought it was an awesome choice, and thankfully the tech that was there and heard me is not the confrontational type, anyone else probably would've slapped me upside the head for saying that.