What kind of food should i use?

You're right, Purina Puppy Chow is not good for her. You're going to want to get her on a good, high quality dog food.

Not all pet food is made equally. A lot of it is full of corn, by-products, dyes, unhealthy preservatives, filler grains and all sorts of nasty stuff. A lot of pet food companies are perfectly happy to the dump cheap leftovers and things that aren't safe for human consumption (from human food processing plants) into their foods. Will it kill your dog? No, it has to be nutritionally complete and safe to even be marketed. Is it healthy? Not by a long shot.

Corn is a low quality ingredient you never want to see in your pet food. Corn and low quality grains are two of the biggest culprits when it comes to food allergies in our pets.

Thankfully, there are some excellent dog foods being made these days that include organic, human grade ingredients rather than trash not fit for human consumption.

Examples of low quality foods to avoid: Anything you can find in a grocery store will be low end, Purina, Iams, Eukanuba, Science Diet, Royal Canin, Pedigree, Kibbles n' Bits, Beneful, Ol'Roy.

Examples of high quality foods to look for: Innova, Wellness, Solid Gold, Canidae All Life Stages, Fromm Four Star, Merrick, GO Natural, Nature's Variety Prairie, Nature's Logic, Artemis Fresh Mix, Timberwolf Organics.

Although the high quality foods are more expensive, you're getting what you're paying for. Less filler material and higher quality ingredients means more concentrated nutrients... this means you typically need to feed far less of the high quality food than you would of the low quality one. Which also means less poop!

Seriously on a budget? Two of the most affordable of the higher quality foods would be Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover's Soul and Canidae All Life Stages.

Before following your vet's food recommendation, keep in mind that vets get /very/ little nutritional training during their schooling. Besides that, what training they /do/ get is usually sponsored or taught by... you guessed it, the crappy pet food companies! They also often get kickbacks from the companies for pushing their products at their clinics (Science Diet, Royal Canin etc.)

A great option is to go with an entirely grain-free diet. Many of the high quality foods now put out grain-free formulas. Some good grain-free diets include: Innova EVO, Wellness CORE, Blue Wilderness, Nature's Variety Instinct, Orijen, Horizon Legacy, Canidae Grain Free All Life Stages, Fromm Surf & Turf, Now!, GO Natural Grain Free, Sold Gold Barking At The Moon, Ziwipeak, and Taste of the Wild.

Some pretty decent foods can even be found in common pet stores. Petsmart carries Blue Buffalo products (such as the excellent grain-free diet, Blue Wilderness). Petco carries Wellness, Solid Gold, Natural Balance, Eagle Pack Holistic Select, Blue Buffalo, Castor & Pollux Organix, Pinnacle, and Halo.

If you can't find a food, most of the high quality dog food brands have websites with store locators on them that will help you find the store closest to you which supplies their products. Simply type the dog food brand's name into Google, go to their website, and type your zip code into their store locator.

Another option, if you can't find anywhere around you that sells good foods, is to order your pet food online. Here's an excellent place to do so: http://www.petfooddirect.com/store/

Remember that foods should be switched gradually (mixing the new slowly in with the old over the period of about week or so), especially when switching to a higher quality one, so as not to upset tummies. For example:

Days 1 & 2: 75% old food, 25% new food

Days 3 & 4: 50% old food, 50% new food

Days 5 & 6: 25% old food, 75% new food

Day 7: 0% old food, 100% new food

Another option for feeding dogs is to feed raw. This is something that should be thoroughly researched before being attempted:

http://www.rawfed.com/ (RawFed)

http://www.rawlearning.com/ (Jane Anderson's Raw Learning Site)

http://rawfeddogs.net/ (Raw Fed Dogs)

http://www.rawmeatybones.com/ (Raw Meaty Bones)

http://rawfed.com/myths/preymodel.html (Raw Prey Model Diet Vs. BARF Diet)

http://community.livejournal.com/rawdogs/profile/ (Raw Dogs Livejournal Community, excellent raw feeding information on the profile page and overall helpful community for raw feeding questions.)

http://www.rawfed.com/myths/index.html (Myths About Raw Feeding)

Also remember that freefeeding (leaving food down) is the fast lane to canine obesity. Make sure to have scheduled feeding times loosely based on the feeding guidelines on your dog's food. Adult dogs are typically fed two meals a day.

More on dog food:

http://www.dogfoodproject.com/index.php?page=main (Learn how to determine the quality of your dog's food.)

http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/dog_food_reviews/ (Dog food reviews. Four stars is a decent food, five stars is a great food, and six stars is an excellent food.)

Darksong~

Purina is junk...as is pretty much anything you get in a grocery store. Pedigree, Beneful, Iams...all junk. So is Science Diet which vets will actually recommend.

Stay away from foods that list corn, wheat and by-products under their first three ingredients. Some examples of good foods are Wellness, Canidae and Innova. Google these foods to see if you can find them at a pet/feed supply store near you.

Bad ingredients: Any corn, wheat flour, meat by-products

Good ingredients: Meats (chicken, lamb), chicken or turkey meal etc.

ADD: And yes, it's true, vets do get a kickback for selling Science Diet. The fact that a brainwashed vet tech is recommending it doesn't surprise me.

The flake problem with the skin sounds like a slight food allergy. purina is like feeding your dog mcdonalds everyday. I would look into holistic pet food stores in you area they often sell foods that contain no by-products and for your money is a very health choice. I would defenatly do the switch to adult food now while your looking for a good food. Mix a small amount of the new food with the old food and gradually increase the amount of new food daily reducing the amount of old food. You should find a big difference in her skin on a high quality food. Orijen, wellness, solid gold are some good food choices out there just to give you a few names.

If you MUST feed a dry kibble dog food, feed a premium brand. There are three easy rules to determine if a dog food is premium or not. You just have to read the ingredients:

#1 NO NO NO Corn. No corn meal, no corn gluten, NOTHING. If corn is in the ingredients, don't buy. It is a very cheap filler that dogs can't digest.

#2 NO WHEAT! If wheat is anywhere in the ingredients, don't buy the dog food. Wheat is another cheap filler, and the leading cause of dog allergies. Wheat may very well be what is causing your dog's skin problems.

#3 Make sure a NAMED meat product (not by-product) is the FIRST ingredient. This means Beef, Chicken, Pork, Lamb, Veal, whatever. Make sure the meat has a name and is the first ingredient. If it just says "meat meal" then you have no idea what you are getting. Many euthanized animals are sent to rendering plants and made in to dog food, and these are your mystery meats that have no names.

Some good foods:

Blue Buffalo (Highest quality PetSmart sells)

Diamond (highest quality PetCo sells)

Wellness

Evo

Some BAD foods (stay away from these!! I don't care what the idiots say):

Science Diet (my least favorite for MANY reasons)

Iams

Purina

Royal Canin

Pedigree

Beneful

Puppy Chow or Alpo

ANY food bought at grocery stores or walmart

ADD: And try to limit the wet food. Not only is there no nutrition, but it is very bad for your dog's teeth. When I use to feed dog food, my dog got half a can of wet food once a week or so, as a treat only. Think of wet food as McDonalds ground up in to a can with water added. YUCK

That being said, I highly urge everyone to switch over to raw food. Dog food, even Premium dog food, is just plain BAD. The very fact that it is cooked makes it highly undigestible by your dog. This means the pancreas and liver have to kick in to over drive to digest it, and this can lead to pancreas and liver failure later in life. And because there is very little water content, the kidney has to work extra hard in the digestion problem, and this not only leads to kidney problems, but can lead to urinary problems such as urine crystals and stones.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me, but after doing research, I find dog food TERRIFYING, and I refuse to feed it.

EDIT: And Tarah S is an idiot, by the way. Corn may be a source of protein, but DOGS CAN NOT DIGEST GRAINS! They can't digest corn! Period, end of story. They also have a very hard time digesting any vegtation. It's all about the enzymes they produce (or don't produce. Carnivores don't produce that many enzymes because raw food has enzymes that helps them digest it. Cooking food kills enzymes, therefore animals that don't naturally produce a lot of enzymes can't digest it very well. Exactly why raw food spoils faster then cooked food). Another bad thing about dog foods. They tell you 100% nutrition is there, and it very well may be, but NO testing has ever been done on dog food to see if dogs can actually digest it.

Science Diet is highly recomended by vets because they are the leading contributor to vet scholarships, and they also give vets a high rate to sell their products in their offices. Most vets have very little nutritional knowledge. Vet school doesn't really teach you nutrition. It takes actual side research to trully know. I don't trust the majority of vets when it comes to nutrition.

most foods eaten by cowboys in the early times was beef and pork in the form of fresh steak but mostly a lot of jerky and salt pork because there was no refrigeration on the range so the meat had to be smoked or salted to survive longer distances. corn was a major staple as well as flour and yes beans were good, molasses and sugar were kept as well as salt were major spices, hard tack (a form of hard cracker) could be soaked in coffee to soften them up and it can still be bought to this day. chicken (known as "yard bird" back then) was eaten on occasion when near a town or a friendly farmer.a lot of venison from deer or antelope and sometimes even rattlesnake, potatoes were also a major staple, Cowboys were pretty resource full so they could make a meal out of a lot of things that may turn a lot of peoples stomach. today we eat pretty much everything every one else eats except maybe a little more meat than the average person but in all fairness we also burn a lot more calories than the average person does so we eat a lot of high protein and carbohydrates but we tend to stay away from "fish bait" foods.

Why wouldn't you want to add omega oils to her food forever? My dogs have all gotten a salmon oil capsule daily since I've had them and their skin and coats are in great condition.

You need to select a food that has meat as the first ingredient and none of the cheap fillers that dogs can't digest and are a major cause of food allergies - wheat, corn, sorghum, and beet pulp. And if you feed a really good quality food, you feed less of it. If your dog does really good on the food, that's the right one for her. Some brands to consider would be Canidae (probably the cheapest of the better ones), Innova, Wellness, Solid Gold, Orijen or Timberwolf Organics.

Kibble is always better than wet food - and you want a quality kibble. NO corn, NO by-products, name meat meals in the first six ingredients, NO food dyes, NO fillers. Here:

http://www.wagandtrain.com/pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20...

Vets and specialty stores recommend the food they get the best kickbacks from. Vet also get MINIMAL nutritional training - and guess what, it's funded mainly by the BIG brands (like Purina, Science Diet) which are totally crap foods (they know it too, or they wouldn't need to sign vets on to promote it.)

GOOD foods include the following brands:

Canidae

Wellness

Innova

EVO

Taste of the Wild

Chicken Soup (for the....)

BAD foods include the following brands:

Science Diet

Iams

Purina

Pedigree

Grocery brands (Ol'Roy)

You could also decide to go raw - many people are switching over to raw feeding (including myself) because they find it to be good for their dogs. Here is some info on it:

http://www.rawfeddogs.net/

http://rawfed.com/myths/

Note: Most of the time you will NOT find a vet that will recommend anything OTHER than the brand they are getting kickbacks from. They will hem and haw about switching even to other poor brands (like if your dog was on Science Diet and wasn't doing great, and you wanted to switch to Purina.)

Merrick dog foods are WONDERFUL.. and healthy! My pit mix loves the Turducken and Grandma's Chicken Pot Pie varieties. It isn't terribly expensive and the price is worth the health my dog has.. I'm not quite sure why your vet would recommend changing foods often as that often causes stress and stomach problems..

Do you have a local health food store? Many of them carry holistic dog foods that might address her skin problems.

Purina Beneful Healthy Growth for Puppies