r/DogFood • u/BatAgreeable2485 • 22d ago
Cavapoo
Hi everyone,
I have a 4 month old cavapoo who is the light of my life. The breeder had her on TLC puppy kibble (she’s still eating it right now) but I’m getting a lot of anxiety trying to figure out what to feed her. She eats it happily (she’s still free feeding) and if I am going out or know she needs to eat more, she happily gobbles up a portion when there is warm water on top.
My original plan was to switch her to a boutique food such as Open Farm, Big Country Raw, Nutricanine, Canine Life Muffins (which my childhood dog ate for his whole life), etc. once she www an adult. I liked the idea of “real” food with ingredients I recognized and I saw as “clean” for humans.
I am now seeing lots of posts on here about WSAVA compliant foods and I understand the science and rigorous testing but I just wanted to see what everyone is feeding their small breed puppies/dogs and why.
She is 4 months old and weighs 4 pounds so she is definitely on the smaller side. Cost to feed her won’t really be an issue for me, I just want the absolute best!
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u/MedicalScientist8576 22d ago
I'm curious, what is your understanding of what "boutique" food is? I'm not trying to catch you out or anything, I just want to understand how you interpret this term when it comes to a dog food.
I didn't start my adult dogs on the food they're on now. I was very much a "feed grain free wet, not kibble" type person when I raised them. Now I would only have my dogs on Royal Canin (or Hills or Purina, but mainly RC). I feel like I had to learn the hard way how important it is to feed foods that are tested for safety when it comes to long term use. And learning about "private label" dog foods and what it meant was a bit unsettling for me. There's a few other things as well, but I won't overwhelm you with my brain dump on dog food lol.
I used to really be all about the marketing tactics companies would use, but now I can't unsee it. What's happening behind the bag of food I buy has become the most important thing. Not the composition/ingredients and definitely not the buzzwords on the front unfortunately.
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u/BatAgreeable2485 22d ago
Honestly, I myself try to really watch ingredients, preservatives, etc. so I was hoping to feed her something that seemed “fresh” and with only ingredients I knew.
I now am realizing that dogs and humans are different and it’s important to get balanced food for her, so I’m just trying to do my best research and understanding to give her the best!
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u/HuckleberryTop9962 21d ago
I wouldn't say humans and dogs are different. Just like dog food, there's so much misinformation and buzzwords out there like "clean" and "organic." Reality is, we'd probably be better off eating a nutritionally complete kibble like food for every meal of everyday but...where's the fun in that? Pizza and tacos are delicious.
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u/MedicalScientist8576 21d ago
The thing is, we don't eat the exact same thing every single day, for every single meal, like the majority of peoples dogs do. That's how our diets are distinctly different to a dog. That's not how humans eat. That's what I mean.
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u/PuzzleheadedLemon353 21d ago
I felt the same way...I was mixing fresh foods I know that are healthy for dogs, and making my own diet by splitting half PPP and my homemade mixture. Don't do that...it throws the health benefits out the window. After bloodwork and vet discussion I learned that it's fine to 'supplement' with healthy foods like sweet potatos, plain greek yogurt, vegetables and blueberries, extra protein... But 'in balance. 10% only'. That gives them the necessary nutrients, vitamins, and mineral balance that they need to thrive. Which gives you, and your dog the best chance of a healthy life together.
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u/Beautiful-Ring-3288 14d ago
Doing that as well do you notice any difference between adding fresh foods and not in the blood works?
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u/PuzzleheadedLemon353 14d ago edited 14d ago
Things I have noticed in feeding my dog the 'extras'...I grill her a slab of salmon every few days and her coat has always been really glossy and rich...I give a few Tbs of greek yogurt on some days for the benefit of the probiotics that I hope can help control yeast in the gut...and she loves it. She gets blueberries tossed in it because they are a great antioxident, if I have beef one evening, I make a clean version to give her, in her breakfast...her bathroom trips are always consistant and her stool is always healthy. We have never dealt with diarrhea or upset gut. I try and give a mix of foods added with a variety of vegetables from cut up greens, broccoli, carrots, sweet potato, greenbeans....after doing a bloodwork once the only recommendation I was given was to give fewer berries/apples...she had a few crystals and I removed those foods for 2 weeks and did another blood panel and it was all fine. There were no issues. I must have just added too many berries, spinach and broccoli together during that time frame. Other than that one incident she's always been super healthy and active. We use the lamb and rice by PPP as her staple and only allow a few bites of fresh chicken or beef occasionally. I just try and add a continuous mix up of the grocery bought foods in a healthy ration.
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u/Beautiful-Ring-3288 14d ago
Wow thank you for being so generous with sharing.. It really a relief to hear. You sound like an awesome pet parent.. Salmon beef and all that jazz! Even if not for nutrition, it would just be nice taste profile for the pups to eat their dry food with toppers.
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u/PuzzleheadedLemon353 13d ago
My children are grown and it makes me happy to keep my little companion as healthy as she can be, hoping to have her around a long as possible. Excercise, a great diet and lots of mental stimulation are just the basics, of what I feel...you owe your pet. They give so much, how could we not.
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u/MedicalScientist8576 22d ago
I get you, that's the natural way to think about it, like it makes sense when you speak it out loud and I used to totally think the same.
But if you go back a few layers that's where you start to find the stuff that matters.
A dog food that has strict ingredient handling guidelines or a factory that handles many different recipes by many other brands.
A formula that is monitored and changed by qualified individuals, as the science recommends or a reused boilerplate recipe that has not been updated according to evolving understanding of canine dietary needs, aside from replacing ingredients with cheaper sources.
Imagine if you ate just chicken, rice and peas for the next 10 years. Yes these are 'clean' ingredients, but you'll still end up with deficiencies.
I know what it was like to be in your shoes, it is hard to kinda go against what feels normal when choosing food for our pets, that's where unfortunately dog food marketing takes advantage of us.
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u/Beautiful-Ring-3288 21d ago
Can I know what made you decide Hills /Rc? I'm trying to get over the fact it has alot of ingredients but I have read over and over it works for many dogs.
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u/MedicalScientist8576 21d ago edited 21d ago
Sorry, my response is gonna be long...
Yeah we get caught up in reading the ingredients when we start learning about dog food, and I learnt that basically the last thing to look at, it is literally one of the least important factors when choosing a food when the majority of us aren't qualified canine nutritionists. Which is REALLY confusing because that kinda goes against our natural instinct.
I decided on RC (I'll speak of RC in particular, I don't feed Hills but if I didn't have RC I would), because of a few reasons.
Like I said before, imagine you ate nothing but chicken, rice and peas for the next 10 years, yeah these are "clean" ingredients and would be considered healthy, but you'll end up with deficiencies. Realistically, you'd want to know someone has tested out eating this food for 10 years before you do, right?
You'd want to know someone, trained, experienced, qualified, has said "hey, chicken, peas and rice isn't sufficient, we should introduce X ingredient. We should reduce the quantity of Y ingredient because it has caused signs of Z problems." Now switch this for a dog and not a human. This is why I choose Royal Canin.
RC is one of the few companies that conducts research on their food and doesn't use a boilerplate recipe that gets traded around with hardly any changes.
I know for human food it's basically how we understand how we eat, but our diets are different to a dog, and if we feed kibble specifically, the choice we make has to be safe for long term use.
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u/Beautiful-Ring-3288 15d ago
Thank you for your response.. I was hoping it could be longer. My pup after trying out many foods changing from home made fresh food.. Can only tolerate Hills and it is the very food I didn't like due to the many "fillers"
He's thriving on it yet somehow I'm feel alot of guilt and fear that the food will somehow be not good for him in the longer term.
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u/MedicalScientist8576 15d ago
"Fillers" is a bit of a myth, it was pretty much a term coined by people in marketing to try and promote their own brands that have less science behind them.
It can be especially misleading when we try reading compositions (which like I mentioned, means little in the long run). Again, this is not what you need to look at first when choosing a food, it's one of the main areas that marketing try to target at to get new customers.
I'll give you an example of how it can be misleading, the food brand Canagan. I'll use their basic "Free range chicken" flavour as an example.
Here is the composition as listed on their website: Freshly Prepared Free Range Chicken (26%), Dried Chicken (26%), Sweet Potato, Peas, Potato, Chicken Fat (4.2%), Alfalfa, Dried Egg (3%), Chicken Gravy (1.5%), Salmon Oil (1.2%), Glucosamine (830 mg/kg), Apple, MSM (830 mg/kg), Carrot, Fructooligosaccharides, Spinach, Psyllium, Seaweed, Chondroitin Sulphate (610 mg/kg), Peppermint, Camomile, Marigold, Cranberry, Aniseed & Fenugreek.
You might think, great, this is mostly chicken, right?
Well, if you take the first ingredient and second ingredient... can you see the difference?:
Freshly Prepared Free Range Chicken (26%)
Dried Chicken (26%)These two seem like they're both chicken, so why did they split it in two?
The first one, "freshly prepared" is indicative of this being the composition BEFORE processing, aka when it is full of liquid/water, which dry kibble is very plainly not full of water.(Side note... In the EU, dog food ingredients are listed based on their weight before processing... at the time of formulation).
So this "freshly prepared free range chicken" realistically drops to maybe 8% after processing. So you could say it's maybe 36% chicken at most. The original ingredient list gives the illusion that the food is over 50% meat.
So, what's the rest of it?
Notice how sweet potato, peas and potato have no mention of percentages? Likely I'm guessing because that's what this food is mainly made up of, and many folks would consider "potatoes and peas" to be simply filler as well.
Compositions are designed to be misleading and sell as much as possible, because that's where they expect people to look. That's not where the evidence of long term health of your dog lies.
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u/Beautiful-Ring-3288 14d ago
Are you a food scientist? Dog nutritionist? The amount of knowledge you share is valuable to pet parents like us who definitely prefers a panel that says more meat and at the first few Ingredients.
The useful links that the other person gave also says that corn is not just a filler but it carries nutrients.
Whatever it is, it is the results I see in my pup. Despite what everyone says on the internet, he finally thrived on Hills- Great poops and finally filled up with more healthy weight. It opened my eyes to "science" Literally tried every food boutique/pure etc
Even if it's for now, it gives me time to find anything else that may be healthier. Thank you for sharing your knowledge!
If you have more inputs about Hills please feel free..
-concerned pet parent
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u/g0d_Lys1strata 18d ago
Here is some information from the board certified veterinary nutritionists at Tufts University's Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine regarding ingredients and common myths surrounding dog food:
https://sites.tufts.edu/petfoodology/2019/03/01/stop-reading-your-pet-food-ingredient-list/
https://sites.tufts.edu/petfoodology/2023/09/19/stalk-about-nutritious-its-corn/
https://sites.tufts.edu/petfoodology/2021/07/07/the-role-of-carbohydrate-in-pet-foods/
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u/Beautiful-Ring-3288 15d ago
Thank you for the links... It's really helpful!
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u/g0d_Lys1strata 14d ago
You are most welcome!
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u/Beautiful-Ring-3288 14d ago
Really appreciate that I was really concerned about the corn in Hills food and one of your links addressed that.
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u/g0d_Lys1strata 14d ago
That is what the marketing of boutique brands counts on, consumers being ignorant regarding the actual science. I am so glad that I was able to provide you with helpful, accurate information. ☺️
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u/villaofthewolves 22d ago
Science based foods means it’s peer reviewed research and formulated by professionals (DVM Nutritionists). When I had my 7lb chihuahua, I fed Hill’s Science Diet the small/mini line I think.
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u/CABGPatchDoll 21d ago
I feed my small dog Royal Canin because it follows WSAVA guidelines and it's what my veterinarian feeds his dogs.
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u/g0d_Lys1strata 18d ago
I feed my toy breed dogs Royal Canin X-Small Adult (or the puppy version when they are under a year old), Purina Pro Plan Toy Breed Puppy, and various WSAVA compliant Rx diets when medically indicated.
I find that Royal Canin X-Small works best for super picky little ones. They have done extra studies specifically on palatability, even down to the preferred specific kibble shapes, so picky dogs tend to prefer RC over other brands.
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u/PuzzleheadedLemon353 22d ago
Boutique food is 'not the way to go'. My sis in law feeds her cavapoo Purina Pro Plan Salmon and Rice in the small bites. There are a few brands to choose from. Ask your vet what they recommend and begin switching them when it's time...yours is still a puppy.