Dog Food Comparison Tool

@woodhouse I fed Simba TOTW Pacific Stream all his life, but I can’t afford it with these two goons. Being younger and more energetic, even though smaller than he was, each of them eat more than he did, which has more than doubled my dog food output. I didn’t set out to have two dogs, I took in an emergency placement and am glad I did, but its been a stretch of many things, budget included, to accomodate two giant dogs when I’ve long been accustomed to only one.

@moondrake It’s good of you to take it on, doggos need good homes!

I’m actually looking at the Premium Edge Healthy Weight one (it’s more expensive than on that sheet, $48.99 for 35lbs on Chewy) since you posted this. My doggo could definitely stand to lose some lbs.

@gumtreertmug Thanks, but they’ve pushed the price up to what I’d pay locally at pet stores for good quality stuff. The bag they are charging $50 for was $32 at Costco, that’s the price point I’m trying to match. I might buy a bag for transition at that price, but that’s really more than I can afford to pay it would increase my dog food costs by over 50%.

@moondrake

Who could put a price on a well fed and happy dog though?

@gumtreertmug In a perfect world this is true. But I’m a retiree living on a fixed income in an imperfect world, so I must shop wisely. Also, this isn’t a perfect dog food, it just was of unusually low price for the level of quality. If the price is raised by over 50% for anything, it’s time to shop around.

@Thumperchick +1 for Diamond Naturals. My #1 concern has been no corn as it seemed to give our youngest an attitude problem. All our girls do well on it, and it’s not very expensive at Tractor Supply.

@moondrake

You can’t buy online and have it shipped?

@gumtreertmug That just occurred to me a moment ago. I’ve never ordered from Costco online. I checked the Costco website and it’s there, about 25% more expensive than locally but still somewhat reasonable. I am planning to order some today. I’m waiting for a callback to ask if the line is discontinued or if it’s just locally, to determine if I need to stockpile till I can find a new resource or just plan to order as I go. That still means an extra $500 a year for dog food.

@moondrake

I mean, if it’s just discontinued locally, you could probably see if anyone here would buy in a store near them and then ship to you.

Though each 40 pound bag would need to be shipped separately, and when you factor in the cost of shipping it Priority Mail, the amount you’d end up saving may not even end up at that much. (Although I’m assuming you know the various prices. Feel free to do the math.)

Although I guess they could be shipped a different way, provided you get the new shipments within 10 days of the last.

Naturally though, this probably isn’t ideal.

lolz that dog on the package even looks sad

@narfcake I have found that site to be fantastic. I use it all the time now.

@lisaviolet Thanks, it’s there, but it’s bumped up about 30% (from $32 locally to $42 online). I spoke to corporate and he said he sees no sign that it’s being discontinued nationwide. Even more interesting, he said there’s a standing order for our local store. So maybe I am panicking for nothing. Maybe the cashier who asked the manager for me got bad information. I called the store earlier and the manager wasn’t available so I’m calling again shortly.

Yesterday was a terrible day. I lost a pair of glasses, still missing. I left my phone wallet with my drivers license and primary credit card at Taco Cabana and didn’t realize it was missing till I was across town. In searching for the missing phone I spilled a cup of tea all over white clothing and into the bag containing my book, my tablet and other things. The tablet was unharmed, the book was stained but still salvageable, the other stuff was was ok. Called my phone from my friend’s phone and the manager at TC answered. Some honest person (1,000 blessings upon them) turned it in intact and she was holding it at the office. Decided to get our Costco shopping done since we were already there before driving back across town for the phone. Discovered the dog food I rely on was discontinued (maybe a false alarm, fingers crossed). Got back on the highway to go get my phone. Got most of the way there and hit a freeway closure, all cars being detoured at the exit we were headed for. Didn’t see the jam till we were past the last clear exit. I10 was at a standstill with a thousand cars trying to exit on a small, little used street. Took us 1.5hrs to travel a mile to the next exit. When it became clear I wasn’t going to get home in time to meet the gaming group at my house, and of course I don’t know anyone’s numbers (the friend I was with is from a different social circle), it took some crazy networking to track down someone’s number to let them know what was going on. It wasn’t just that they couldn’t get in, we were in my friend’s car and mine was in the driveway, they’d have freaked out and probably broken a window thinking I was in therefore incapacitated. Finally got home over an hour late for the game, they were patiently waiting on the screen porch. This morning the milk I’d bought at Costco was spoiled, no surprise after almost 2 hours in the car. I am glad yesterday is done!

@moondrake Taco Cabana - I10 - San Antonio, eh?

@Lighter Well, Google me. When I left San Antonio there was just the one in the old DQ. Today, I find that it is a large chain and could be any one of the several cities on I10 that could have an hour traffic backup. So, I withdraw that comment!
My whippets like Taste of the Wild. But at two cups each per day it isn’t a super drain on the fixed retired income for me.

@Lighter I’ve eaten at that one. Mine are in El Paso. It’s my favorite fast food by far, I eat there at least once a week. It’s economical, and the food and salsa are freshly made.

Yes, I go through 10 cups per day. Plus heartworm pills are very expensive as they are both over 100lbs so I have to give two pills each. I think heartworm plus food is pretty close to $150 monthly. And it’s an expense I chose, and they are more than worth it. I just need to keep the expense as reasonable as I can.

@moondrake I initially missed your remarks on Diamond products in the op. I’ll have to check on that.

@moondrake I am glad to hear your dog food is not discontinued!

This thread has some good responses and info, definitely not useless.

@djslack Simba was my heart. He wasn’t just important to me, though. We were a therapy team and he touched the lives of hundreds of people in nursing homes, Alzheimers units, children’s reading programs and the center for the mentally ill. When I got him from rescue as a puppy I had a great deal of trouble finding food he could tolerate. At the time Taste of the Wild Pacific Stream was a godsend. I fed him TOTW PS for ten years. In March he suddenly, abruptly stopped eating. The second day of not eating I took him to the vet. It was the first of about a dozen trips to the vet totalling over $2,500. I was able to get him to eat home cooked chicken and rice for a few days, then he couldn’t tolerate anything, pretty much constant vomitting and bloody stool. I purchased nutritional paste and pureed white rice and hamburger (a recipe I found online and confirmed with my vet) and force fed him 6x a day with a turkey baster. Still he couldn’t hold down food, continued to lose strength and the muscle mass just dropped off him. The vet ran dozens of tests, xrays, ultrasounds, found nothing except poor liver numbers, sold me a lot of expensive, useless medicine with no diagnosis, and in the end said it must be stomach cancer. There was no sign of cancer, but they couldn’t find anything actually wrong. After three weeks of desperately struggling to save him I finally had to let him go. It was the second worst day of my life. But I thought, “you did everything you could”. Then I stumbled on this page. Did I cause his terrible suffering and death by feeding him this supposedly premium food? Yet here I am feeding another Diamond product and praying that it is okay, because choices are so limited when you have a large dog with a sensitive stomach and a tight budget.

@moondrake I’m so sorry to hear that. That page is a definite fright, even tempered by the fact that those sites are generally found by more people with complaints than happy customers. I will be checking out my options with some of the resources on this thread.

@djslack What disturbs me most is that many of them were happy customers for years right up until the point that their dogs got sick, about the same time Simba did. And most of the complainants don’t sound like cantankerous ankle biters. Complaint sites are always biased, but there’s too much Deja Vu for me in reading these.

@Xeem - I’m inclined to agree and even the reviewers don’t always get good reviews - I use the Dog Food Advisor site as a rough guide, but take it with a grain of salt. It helps to check, though, because otherwise I probably wouldn’t catch the recall notifications.

@aetris I love dogfoodadvisor, but their biggest limitation is that their reviews are based on the label. They don’t test actual content. That’s reasonably safe, especially with Purina ninja testing the claims of the premium foods and suing if they find incongruities between label and actual content. There’s a lot that sucks about our tort system, but it does work to keep soulless corporations honest. But if something goes wrong, there are a lot of sick and dead dogs before people put together what’s wrong and get a recall notice out. Most of those recall notices have a long story of pain and destruction behind them.

@Xeem Yeah, my first Dane and Wolfie were raised on Old Roy and lived to be 12 in good health. But it seems like tummy troubles are a contributing factor to pet surrenders, my last two adopted Danes have had sensitive stomachs. The wolfies have all had constitutions of iron.

@moondrake - Imho it’s better to have some information than none. I don’t trust ANY source implicitly but even though not all corporations are soulless and not all batches are bad, I’d rather hear about the recall notices than not. My little monster thinks he has a cast-iron stomach but that can’t last forever!

@DrWorm Companies like this.

We conduct palatability / taste feeding trials in dogs and cats based on AAFCO Guidelines (American Association of Feed Control Officials) using qualified panels of animals.

http://www.vetx.com.au/palatability-taste-testing-dog-cat/

Add humans:
http://moneypantry.com/making-extra-money-pet-food-taster/

Cat food:
http://mentalfloss.com/article/26562/inside-surprisingly-delicious-world-cat-food-taste-testing