Food Snob

A few weeks ago, one of my favorite dogs bloggers wrote about a very touchy subject.  What you feed your dog(s).  The jist of her article was about how divisive this subject is and how so many people get so passionate about their opinions.  It's often too easy to fall into a debate of "if you really love Fido, then you would feed him this." 

Now fortunately, all of the blogs I read are written by people way smarter than I who know their stuff when it comes to all things dog.  I also do a bit of research on my own and truly believe that I make the best decisions I can based on the information I have at hand.  I once read a quote, "When you choose your advisor, you choose your advice."  Of course that is true.  I have my local experts who give me advice on good, holistic foods for my dogs.  I also rely on Dog Food Advisor to give me a starting point and a high-level overview of my choices.  I talk to people and I see the reactions of Ray and Julius (ok, just Ray.  Julius will eat anything that isn't green.) 

I realized though, that while there may be a multitude of people who may try to bully convince others into spending beyond their budget on food for their canine companions, there are just as many people who truly believe they are feeding a high quality kibble to their dog, though it might be something I wouldn't really feel comfortable feeding to the boys.  I'm of the mindset that if it works for you and your dog, then great!  If you ask what I feed, I will tell you.  If you want to know why, I will tell you why.  When you tell me what you feed, I will say, "great," and leave it at that, so don't feel the need to convince me to change.

The challenge for me is when our Vet pushes recommends a food that I wouldn't dream of feeding.  I've noticed at their office a lot of literature supporting why corn is good, why fillers are good, why animal by-products are good and I just cringe. I know that this food company really has an "in" with veterinarians and our vets really don't do a lot of research on nutrition so I just nod. One of our vets even was recommending a food for Ray to loose weight and said their dog ate it and lost weight but they had to switch because the dog lost too much weight. Do you think maybe because it wasn't getting any nutrition?

I feed a 5 star rated food to both Ray and Julius, but that is because they love it, I support the ingredients and it fits my budget. Ray is overweight and I know that.  He will be sedentary for several weeks, if not months and I know that, too.  I've switched him to the reduced fat version of his regular food, switched out as many treats as possible with fresh vegetables.  I commit to a slow and steady rehab for his leg and by the end of the summer we should both be lean, mean fighting loving machines again. 

So tell us, what do you feed and why?  How do you handle the food controversy or have you managed to stay apart from it?

Sweet Taters

I got an extra special treat today.  Mom read that the Chickerdoodles get sweet potatoes as treats but in her usual manner, forgot exactly what she read and got everything all mixed up.  She peeled and sliced a big, fat sweet potato and dropped the slices in a bowl of ice water and gave me a nice cold slice.  She called it a flip chip because whenever I get a new veggie to try I like to flip it up in the air a few times, then scrunch my nose up at it while I play gitchie. 

 

I was moving so fast and Mom is so old and slow, that she got a funny blurry picture of me with my flip chip.  After I finished throwing it around my head and growling at it, I settled down to munch on my sweet prize. 

Mom got really close too, and took close up pictures of my handsome face, but I had a surprise for her.  I grabbed the strings on her camera stap and clamped down on them because I wanted to take pictures too.  Now, when I get something in my fat mouth, I don't really like to let go.  Daddy said I'm stubborn.  Mom says I'm bull-headed, then she laughs like she said something funny.  All I know is because I like to hold things in my fat mouth and then sit real still like I don't have anything in my mouth, Mom decided to balance chunks of sweet taters on my head!

I decided it might be a good time to not have the camera stap in my mouth anymore.

Oh, yeah, speaking of food, Mommy said to tell you there's been a recall on AvoDerm dog food.

~by Ray-Ray

Weekend Round up

Over the weekend, Asia and I spent some quality time working on decorations for her upcoming baby shower.  We were working on making tulle pom-poms with some instructions I garnered off the internet and with the eager assistance of Jae and Ray.  Actually, Ray was a very good boy and lay on his mat keeping a careful eye on the pom making while Jae, in his usual kitty cat fashion grabbed all of the ribbons and tulle and anything else pretty that moved. 

When we got a few poms done, Asia thought that maybe Ray would like to wear one.  Here was his reaction.

On a not so good note, I found a tick on Ray's ear.  I think I got it pretty quickly as it came off easily with no blood but I'm still worried that this is going to be a bad summer for ticks.  The other concerning occurance is the huge Diamond dog food recalls.  I don't feed any of the affected products, but if you do please be very careful.

Have a great Monday, everyone!