but a dog food that is produced by one specific company does not make it un healthy.
well, there is the small but important fact that purina doesn't make a single high quality food tho. there are some companies that make "budget" foods that don't measure up to their higher end products, but purina doesn't even carry what i would consider a high end line. the company is owned by the food giant nestle and makes a huge profit from including the byproducts and offal from human food production in their cat and dog food.
That and the sole fact that a trainer would know what a dog should eat so that it stays healthy and get proper utrition. I havent met too many trainers who know alot on how to train dogs but know nothing on what dog food would be best.
i'd hardly make that an automatic assumption. sadly there are still too many trainers out there who recommend poor quality foods like purina, science diet, nutro and so on. they believe what the pet food companies tell them but generally do little research on their own, unless they take a special interest for one reason or another. my obedience instructor for example is a great woman and knows a lot about how to teach dogs just about anything from obedience to herding sheep, but she still recommends pupperoni and other similar junk treats for use in classes.
also i asked my vet and 4 others about what they think about proplan and said they HIGHLY reccomend it.
of course they do. purina and hill's (the maker of science diet) are
the biggest sponsors of nutrition courses at vet schools and sponsor a lot of nutritional research. personally i see this as a conflict of interest - similar to what the situation would be if mcdonalds, pizza hut or taco bell sponsored the nutritional education of doctors and research on nutrition in the human field.
Each PRO PLAN formula contains a scientifically calculated protein to fat ratio to meet the energy requirements of the life-stage, or lifestyle, of your pet. This helps maintain lean muscle mass, without excess body fat - for a long, lean and healthy life.
scientifically calculated formulations to allow for the maximum profit margin at the lowest cost. brewer's rice instead of whole grain rice, poultry byproduct meal and corn gluten meal instead of a meat meal that is digestible enough to
not need a gluten booster to make up on protein content, corn split up into whole grain corn, corn gluten meal and corn bran in order to disguise the higher content of corn than the advertised rice (that isn't even whole rice), egg product instead of fresh, whole eggs, the list goes on. not to forget that all these ingredients are feed grade, not high quality.
and all that at a higher price than several brands of high-end foods from human grade ingredients. you can get a 40 lb bag of canidae for around $35 for example and don't have all kinds of unnecessary chemicals and stabilizers going into your dog.
as emma said, this isn't personal. we all want to do the best we can for our dogs, which is the main reason i started researching commercial foods four years ago.