My personal opinion...

First off let me say that I just need to say something because I swear by this dog food/cat food, Purina.
I know its not high quailty and alot of yall don't feed it cause its not Innova, Eagle (something), etc etc.
But this food has changed my dogs and cat's life, coat, skin, and overall health.

When we got Jet she was SOOO overweight that her eyes were almost swollen shut, her skin was very oily and dry, and her coat looked rough as sandpaper.
We started feeding her Purina and within a couple weeks she looked amazing. It took a couple months to get the weight off but now she looks amazing.
Her coat is glossy and soft, her skin is nice and clear, and she doesn't stink.

As for Peanut (the cat), thats all he will even eat. Every since I got him he has been eating Purina cat food and his coat is amzingly awesome and he is beyond healthy. My vet even said she has never seen a cat so healthy.


Sorry if any of this came off as rude,mean, or wrong in any way. I know there is better food out there but this works for MY pets.
Just my 2cents anyways....

The people who talk about the better food brands are doing so based on ingredients not brand names.

I've known dogs to live long lives on gains burgers, heck..George Burns smoked cigars his whole life and look how long he lived. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive to give our pets the best that we can based on current knowledge...if it's an option.

Well we don't get all those high quailty brands around here.
No store near us carries them and I REFUSE to order my dog/cat off line or through a catalog. JMO

Well said, Doc.

Just so yall don't get confused. I DO give my pets the best I can and they are all healthy and happy.

Thats what we are suppose to do right? And I do that.

Read what's written, Dak,not what you think may be written.

I also like the adage, "read your dog as well as the label" - the food I'm feeding right now isn't the greatest, but my dogs are doing the greatest on it.

I read what was written. I was just MAKING SURE.

I 100% agree, and have always used this method with my horses and dogs alike. It doesn't have to be trendy or overly expensive - if your animals do well on it, and they're not for want of nutrition, then there is nothing wrong with feeding it. My dog will tell me when it's time to change / upgrade / increase / lessen amounts.

And I don't feed a low quality food; I'm just saying that I agree with doing what works for your dog. The End.

Hell, look at all the controversy surrounding raw, and there are no clear cut answers. I personally don't agree with the hype, and wouldn't employ the diet myself, but that doesn't mean a great many dogs hasn't had success with it.

There's no doubt that cats/dogs can live just fine on brands like that.
My cat was on Iams for 5 or 6 years and it didn't have any ill effects on him, as far as I can tell.

There are just some ingredients that I don't feel comfortable seeing in my animals food. And that is why my cat is no longer on Iams... and as fantastic as I thought he was, he is doing much better on his current food. For just $3 more, it's a no-brainer which food is the better option.

Thanks for that Sage, really.

If you want to feed Purina, that's fine. I don't think anybody here will give you heck for it.

But out of curiosity, have you ever tried a high-quality food? I thought my dogs were great on Iams until I switched to Eukanuba. Then I thought they were amazing on Eukanuba until I switched to Natural Balance. Then I thought they were phenomenal on Natural Balance until I switched to raw. Even then, it took a bit of tweaking until I hit the ideal mix that really made them look head-turning stunning. And who knows? In a few years, I may come across something even better.

I fed proplan a while and it worked well. Then I started learning about it and it really has to do with ingredients. There are ingredients I just don't feel comfortable at all with. My dogs did well enough on the Purina, I thought.

I honestly know though that the dogs are doing so much better on EVO. It's fun taking Summer back to her breeder after getting off the purina and on the Innova. I finally got my breeder interested in a higher quality food because you just can't deny the change! She didn't look BAD on Purina, but she looks fantastic on the EVO. Beau is looking great too! They're much more muscular and they eat the EVO so much better.

I think anyone needs to find what works for their dogs and what they're comfortable feeding and that's it.

I think it all has to be taken into context. If I adopted a dog that was eating Ol Roy and free eating all they wanted all day (and whoever knows what other conditions) and moved them to Purina (at the very least I would go with Proplan so it lists meat first--I don't think the regular does?)--and fed them regular meals with normal amounts than sure I would hope to see an improvement. Much the same as I would hope to see an improvement going from Purina to Innova or something like that--even if the change wasn't tangible (better coat, better smell) etc--I would still make the switch as you have to think about what's going on inside as well. We all know people can put up good appearances and still be eating very unhealthy (living on diet shakes, have eating disorders, live on junk) etc.

I fed my dogs Purina Dog Chow to start with. We didn't have good results (Smokey is just tender stomached and gets skin issues - found out it was chicken that causes it or at least part of it)
So we moved up to RiverRun (Nutrena brand) which isn't much better than Purina but it was easier to get than the Purina because we didn't have a Walmart or anywhere close by.
Once we moved I switched to Nutro Herring Meal brown rice and potatoes - to see if we could clear up Smokey's skin.
He did quite well on it, but at $42 a bag (30# bag too :yikes: ) it was breaking my bank account as much as he was eating. His coat and skin got a lot better and the hot spots went away finally - hair even stopped falling out!
Then it happened...I made a mistake balancing my checkbook and realized that I really couldn't afford $42 for the bag of food that we needed...so I went to our local Tractor Supply (which is always cheaper than Petco) to see if I could save a few bucks on the Nutro Herring Meal...come to find out that they don't carry it at least that type.
While I was digging through I saw a bag of Diamond Naturals lamb and rice (also had the chicken and rice but my carpet cleaner would be broken if I had bought that!) and remembered that Kirkland and such was made by Diamond (I think Canidae is now too but not sure on that)...so I decided to flip a bag over and read the back. It has close to the same ingredients as the Nutro, and lists meat first and no corn or wheat...and $25 a bag (40# bag) so I figured I'd give it a shot since it would save me almost $20.
They seem to be doing fine on it, though I have noticed an increase in poop (not very significant though maybe a little more than usual) and their coats still look good and no skin issues.

So use what is available and what works for your dogs is all I can really say. Before we moved to NY we had tried Canidae and the results were horrific...I've never seen so much diarrhea in my life and I ended up giving the rest of the bag to the humane society. We also tried a few others with limited success - even very expensive brands (gave Orijen a shot...that wasn't a good idea!) - so we ended up back on Purina Dog Chow until I found the Nutro and then the Diamond Naturals.

I won't knock you for feeding Purina at all

Oh and as a side note, Lily's breeder feeds Pedigree puppy and swears by "bread and peanut butter" for protein...
Needless to say poor Lily had an upset tummy when she came home because I'm not feeding Pedigree

This was my point with Mordy's quote. You don't really know how well they would do on a higher end food. I'm sure they are doing just fine on purina. You might run into trouble done the road but you might not. On a higher end food you'd likely see an even more dramatic change.

In my case though, I've seen the opposite - they're doing better on the Kirkland than they have on high quality foods - EVO, Innova, Nature's Variety... etc.

But I wouldn't know this if I hadn't tried the better kibbles.

We use to feed Eukanuba (sp?) and then moved onto Purina and the change was amazing.
I have never tried higher than Purina because we have nothing higher around here, and as I stated before we will not order food from offline, etc etc.

I am glad I won't get knocked out for feeding Purina. LOL

i couldn't feed purina, euk, and the others anymore, considering you can get food a lot better for the same price. I'm a "get the most bang for my buck" kinda gal. It just seems silly to me to pay for someone's advertising when I could *actually* be paying for the quality of food instead.

When I was growing up, our dogs ate whatever was on sale at the grocery store - kibbles n bits, pedigree, beneful, etc. Now that I've worked in a holistic pet food store, I think those foods might be good to burn in case of winter emergency, but would never consider feeding those to my animals. Well maybe the birds. There's lots of corn in them after all... And not MY birds. My birds eat holistically too (if only the same realization that's come to the dog world would come to the parrot world!). So I guess the squirrel and the wild birds might enjoy it.