Hi everyone,
Looking for tips on dry food options for a toy poodle puppy. Currently on Royal Canin from the breeder, but he’s not overly keen on it and I’ve read quite bad reviews on its contents! New to owning a dog so any help and suggestions are most welcome. Feeling a little out of my depth with so many brands to choose from!
Thank you
Hello Kate. Welcome to the forum. Yes, it is confusing selecting a suitable food for a dog, particularly a puppy. There are so many on the market. There is a thread here which might be helpful for you.When you have looked at the thread, please feel free to ask if you have any questions.
Products that are labelled ‘puppy’ contain higher protein levels. However, there are many high quality dry foods that already contain more protein so if you choose one of these there would be no need to change when the puppy gets older.
A good place to start is the Dog Food Directory because if you use the filters it will narrow down your search. I always tick the boxes for clearly labelled and no red ingredients. If you use these in conjunction with the rating slider set at 75% to 100% it will return the better quality products.
These days we are fortunate in that we have different types of dry food. Most are extruded which means they are highly processed and subject to high temperatures in the manufacturing process. There are also baked foods which are processed slightly differently. Cold pressed products are very different as they are not subjected to high temperatures and they are becoming quite popular now. There is a thread about this type of product here. They are often all age so you would not need to change food as puppy grows - it is usually the quantity that is adjusted. Added to this list there are a few foods that are freeze or air dried and just need water adding to reconstitute them. There is a better explanation about the types of food here.
Dogs can benefit by having some variety in their diet and the problem with dry food is that there usually isn’t any. You can enhance dry food with a little fresh, cooked food if you wish. We have a thread about enhancing dry food here.
I have given you quite a lot of reading there but learning something about dog food will pay dividends in the long run, particularly when starting out with a puppy.
When you transition your puppy to a better quality food, take things steady and gradually increase the new one as you decrease the Royal Canin.
Dottie,
You say that Cold Pressed is not subject to high temperatures, but when I did my research with manufacturers, with a view to employing them to make a Grace Cold Pressed, it was clear to me that in order to prepare the respective protein, dried meal, much higher temperatures were used to create the dried meal, than is used in a high quality extrusion process. Additionally, cold pressed required high levels of starch from either white potato or rice. I questioned the German manufacturers about the Cold Pressed Foods that were using sweet potato only and they stated that those were not real cold pressed. 
I should have bottomed out what they meant by that, but I decided to give them all a wide berth.
I agree totally, some steamed veg is a great additive to dried foods.
Andy
My point about cold pressed food was to explain to Kate that it is different to the more usual extruded food and that it is an alternative. Many people do not know of these products. With that in mind, I directed her to David’s resource article on the types of food and in that he has this to say about cold pressed food:
Cold pressed dog foods are still relatively new on the scene but are growing in popularity rapidly as they present all of the advantages of more conventional dry food processing but without the potentially damaging high temperatures. Ingredients do, however, still have to be dried and ground before pressing and some, like grains, also have to be pre-cooked so there is a certain level of processing, but the final stage is certainly a lot less intensive than extrusion.
Kate is a new puppy owner and my aim was to make the subject as clear and simple as possible and to help her navigate through the choices. It’s important that she finds a good quality food that will help to keep her pup in tip top condition. I don’t really want to cause confusion by going into the finer details of processing, suffice it to say that there is more than one option when it comes to dry food.
I appreciate your thoughts on this subject but it is not appropriate to have a discussion about the manufacture of cold pressed foods within this thread. However, if you would like to share any information that you have about this please could you contact David? I am sure he would be interested. We also have a designated thread on cold pressed food which I linked in my reply.