Hello, am new to this but the website was recommended to me by my brother so thought I would give it a go, we have had our Cavapoo puppy rocco for 4 weeks now and love him, his breeder had him on Arden grange dog food, is this any good? He is not keen on it but didn’t want to change it straight away, I want to change it but the choices are vast and don’t know where to start really, grain free? Hypoallergenic? So confusing, I do know I would like yo keep him on a complete dry food but any advice would be appreciated,
Thanks in advance
Helen
Hello and welcome to the forum helen,
You can see the review and ratings for Arden Grange here At 3.5 it has a fairly decent rating. There are lots of foods with a higher rating but making a decision is not easy. Does your pup have any health or digestive issues? If he has loose or frequent stools, it might be worth looking at grain free and seeing if it makes a difference. If not, some grains are thought to cause less problems than other. EG brown rice.
If you are set on feeding dry food, there are some cold pressed foods available as well as extruded or baked. You can find some information on this thread coldpressed
You may also find this topic useful for searching for some foods to try.
Good luck. I hope you find something suitable.
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Hello and welcome to the forum. Is Rocco doing OK on Arden Grange? What are your reasons for wanting to change? Presumably it is because pup doesn’t like it? Perhaps you want something better for Rocco?
As you say, it is very confusing because there are so many different products. These are some considerations:
- Do you want to feed dry or wet? Remember that dry food can be made more palatable and easier to digest by soaking it. Also a topper of wet or home cooked food can increase palatability. Check out the thread about soaking dry food that is on the forum.
- The food that you give now contains grain so you need to think about whether you want to feed grain free or not. For dogs, the better grains are brown rice and oats but they should not be first on the list of ingredients. Your current food contains maize and as you see,that is controversial. If you decide on grain free, choose sweet potato as the carbohydrate source as it is more nutritious.
- Set your budget but remember that good quality foods can often be given in smaller quantities.
- As you are new to selecting dog foods as Tinyplanets says, check out the cold pressed foods. Many people do not know about these but they all score very well on this website and have some advantages over extruded food. Also, dogs tend to like it, especially when soaked. There is a thread on here about cold pressed products.
You can use the Dog Food Directory of this website to select a suitable food - you need to get familiar with the filters on the left hand side of the page. Please let us know if you need any help using these. As ever, please come back to your thread to let us know what you decide.
Thank you for your replies, rocco is doing great and the vet said he is a healthy weight and size, he didn’t seem keen on the Arden grange to begin with but since my mam has been dog sitting when I have been at work he has been eating her dogs food which is Royal canine and he loves that but don’t think it’s one of the better ones?? No problems with poo they are firm and darkish colour, no runny ones, have been mixing some wet food with it just so that he would eat something, there’s just so much choice and feeling a bit overwhelmed because I really want to do the best by him
I totally understand your confusion - there are so many products on the market these days. Luckily, the Dog Food Directory of this website simplifies things considerably if you spend a bit of time getting familiar with the filters on the left hand side of the page. This is how I have evaluated the products that I have given my dogs and I have learned a lot in the process. I always select no red ingredients right from the off and that immediately brings you to the better quality products.
Your dog is very young and if you learn a bit about The principle of selecting a good dog food it will stand you in good stead for the years to come. Have a look at the linked thread and you will see that it is not as complicated as you might think.
Royal Canin contains some controversial ingredients but there must be plenty of dogs doing fine with the food. If you feel that your dog is doing well on Arden Grange and you are a keen cook, how about sticking with it and topping up with a home cooked meal? Rodney Habib is a pet nutritionist blogger and he talks about this here. Of course you need to read up in order to be sure to give the right sort of food but it is not that difficult.
When thinking of products that are not extruded (manufactured using high temperatures), as well as cold pressed food you might want to consider raw complete products if you have freezer space. There are also air/freeze dried raw but they are expensive AFAIK. Most raw complete foods score very highly on the Dog Food Directory. Examples are Honey’s, Natural Instinct, Natures Menu, Nutriment.
Hi dottie thank you so much for the advice, I have been looking at the different dog foods and got rocco a small bag of the walking the dog grain free puppy food but again he seems unimpressed, will persevere with it for the time being and am just mixing it with his Arden grange, I have ordered him some sample packs of the Eden as this scored 5/5 on the reviews, now to tackle the house training (which is not going well at all
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