Royal Canin Dog Food Review

Website Royal Canin
Available fromPet Circle  

Royal Canin comes with French flair, vet-recommended prescription formulas, and novel breed-specific formulas which are great for hooking you in as a consumer – Ooo, it’s the only Great Dane dog food in Australia!

I find most dog owners feed Royal Canin for two main reasons – it was recommended by their breeder, or recommended by their vet.

The reason for this is the manufacturer (I bet you didn’t know it was Mars?) pours buckets of money into marketing their products to those key people. They’re master marketers, and one of the most influential conglomerates in the world.

Marketing their products to vets and breeders is a genius technique, because when we bring home our new pup we’re going to accept the guidance of those professionals.

But is Royal Canin good for our dogs?

Let’s take a look at the different aspects of Royal Canin, and why you may choose to feed it to your dog.

Big review coming up!

Royal Canin Veterinary vs Hill’s Prescription Diet

I’ll get this out of the way first, as when it comes to prescription dog foods in Australia we really only have two options – Royal Canin and Hill’s Prescription Diet.

If your dog is suffering some kind of health issue like renal, urinary, gastro, or diabetes, these formulas will address the concerns of those illnesses with a specially tailored recipe.

If I’m honest, the dry foods from both brands don’t come across as overly healthy for your dog, as both are very high in grains for what I consider an animal which should have a more meat-based diet.

Out of Royal Canin and Hill’s Prescription dry food recipes I tend to favour Royal Canin, but in both cases I find the wet foods far more appropriate.

Price is also a factor, as neither of these brands are cheap. Thankfully Pet Circle and   keep these brands in stock for competitive prices (Sssh, don’t tell your vet).

Royal Canin Dog Food Review

There’s a 3rd option in Australia for “prescription” style dog foods, and that’s LifeWise. As a smaller Aussie made & owned company I find their formulas are more appropriate for your dog, and they have a decent reputation – worth checking out?

When should I feed Royal Canin? (I’ve heard it isn’t very good!?)

A common question is “I’ve heard Royal Canin isn’t very good, but my dog has [a condition] and I don’t know what to do?”

You can probably blame pet food review websites (like this one) for that kind of confusion, so let’s see if I can put your mind at rest.

If your dog has some kind of health concern, or your vet’s recommended Royal Canin for a particular reason, then feeding such a food for a period of time may help your dog.

For example, if your dog’s had skin or gastro issues on whatever food you’ve been feeding, then Royal Canin Anallergenic may offer your dog some much needed relief.

Also, if your dog is suffering a more severe problem, Royal Canin (or Hill’s) are likely the best options in terms of kibble given other brands won’t cater for those specific dietary requirements.

But!

You have to take a look at the ingredients and ask yourself if they’re really suitable for your dog over the long term.

Fair enough, a formula like Anallergenic may show a dramatic improvement in your dog’s condition, but you need to ask what in the previous food may have caused the issue in the first place?

Even with conditions such as diabetes and renal disease, you must ask yourself these same questions.

Related: Why do vet’s recommend Hills Science / Prescription Diet (or Royal Canin)?

Wet or Dry?

This has been the longest preamble of any review, but we’ll get back on track shortly.

When it comes to Royal Canin Veterinary (and Hill’s for that matter), I find the wet foods far better in terms of ingredients and nutrition. Wet food is generally better than dry, and the process offers more digestible food for our dogs.

When it comes to dental health you’ll find dry foods more commonly recommended, but personally I consider neither wet nor dry overly good at addressing dental health or periodontal disease.

Wet food has no abrasiveness, and dry foods are also questionable – dental formulas merely contain additives to fight plaque.

Some Australian vets promote Raw Meaty Bones in this respect, and I tend to agree with them completely – the gnawing and chewing action I see as a far more natural way for your dog to retain great dental health (which also wards off other disease).

BACK ON TRACK: Royal Canin review

Let’s take a look at Royal Canin from both a marketing standpoint, and what the ingredients really say. There’s a bit of a contrast!

What the marketing says

Royal Canin use the slogan “Health Nutrition Since 1968”. That doesn’t mean their food is formulated primarily for the nutritional needs of your dog. Keep in mind it’s a product, designed for profit, and Mars makes a very lucrative profit out of this brand.

Don’t be fooled by Royal Canin breed specific formulas either. Any decent dog food should cover the nutritional needs of any dog regardless of breed and size, but it’s always worth knowing the dietary needs of your particular breed so you’re fully clued up.

If your specific breed is prone to specific conditions then there’s no reason you can’t address those with supplements, either from natural ingredients or from a pet store.

Breed specific formulas are an excellent marketing angle for Royal Canin, but make sure you read the ingredients and consider if they sound good for your dog!

On the subject of ingredients, let’s take a look…

What the labelling really says

For the sake of this Royal Canin dog food review we’ll take a look at Medium Adult as a benchmark. You’ll find most formulas are similar.

There are four main ingredients in this recipe, so don’t be duped by meat as the first ingredient – it doesn’t meant it’s the most significant ingredient.

The 2nd and 3rd ingredients are maize and… more maize. So very likely more maize than poultry protein as the 1st ingredient.

The 4th ingredient is wheat flour.

Could this be three parts maize and corn to one part “poultry protein”?

If you consider your dog a meat-eater like I do, then this seems a bit odd, does it not?

Royal Canin Dog Food Review

There’s a cunning labelling trick called ingredient splitting where an ingredient is split into two to make another ingredient (usually meat) look more significant. We’re easily fooled into thinking the first ingredient is the main one when it isn’t.

We can consider maize flour and maize the same thing, so a classic case of ingredient splitting.

On the subject of wheat, I find this a common cause of skin and health problems in dogs, and a possible precursor to your vet prescribing Royal Canin Anallergenic to address the issues when they arise (clever, eh?)

Not the “premium” canine diet we were expecting?

Let’s take a look at the more minor ingredients, if you’re still interested?

The 5th ingredient is animal fats (around 14% of the recipe), so anything listed after that can be considered a more minor ingredient. This is where most of the nutrients, vitamins, and minerals to make the food “complete and balanced” are included.

Or in other words, these small inclusions are how the recipe meets requirements (like AAFCO standards) and how all that maize and wheat flour is possible.

The protein in Royal Canin Medium Adult is a little over average at 25%, and with a fat percentage of 14 is okay, but we can guestimate around 45% carbohydrates, mostly from grains.

That isn’t great, and not what you would expect given the premium price.

What are the benefits of feeding Royal Canin to your dog?

Credit where credit’s due, larger manufacturers have better regulation and standards within their factories. Combined with better quality control we should have some assurances Royal Canin is “safe”.

I often hear from people who have visited Mars Petcare production facilities how impressed they are of cleanliness and standards.

Consumer feedback in terms of sudden gastro or vomiting is rare on Royal Canin (and I have to say seems common on some other Australian brands), but my real concern is the long term health impact on our dogs of feeding so much grain.

Royal Canin Dog Food Review

Unfortunately when it comes to “prescription” diets, or diets targeted at specific breeds, Hill’s and Royal Canin Veterinary are the only options. Generally Royal Canin formulas seem marginally better than Hills, and with both brands the wet foods tend to have significantly more meat compared to the grain-based dry formulas.

Royal Canin, in terms of the many Mars brands of dog food sold in Australia, is probably the most “premium” offering, so I suppose that’s a plus.

Where to buy?

Royal Canin dog and cat food is sold everywhere, but you’ll likely find it cheaper at Pet Circle or   – both of these often have sales on, so keep an eye out.

How do you pronounce Royal Canin?

I hear Royal Canin pronounced incorrectly all the time. Many people use the pronunciation Can-in which is incorrect. That’s can as in tan can, and in as in in.

I’ll skip the Royal part as you already know that one.

The correct pronunciation of Canin would be with a French accent given the word is the literal translation of the English word canine. If you want to pronounce Royal Canin in French, simply mimic the audio provided by Google translated – Royal Canin in French (press the speaker button).

In English (or Australian) you know you can get away with saying it however you like, but the most correct pronunciation in English is Royal kay-nin.

Summary

It’s a shame how limited we are with prescription diets for our pets, with Hill’s (Colgate-Palmolive) and Royal Canin (Mars) being the only companies large enough to offer such a wide and cleverly devised range.

The dry foods all seem to be grain-heavy and high carbohydrates, which doesn’t conform to what we know about even basic canine nutrition, let alone specific health conditions.

Overall Royal Canin dry dog foods contain a great deal of corn and allergenic grains like wheat. If you’re worried about the health of your pet it’s worth researching more natural diets for their condition, and tailor a diet to suit.

If you wish to go with Royal Canin (perhaps at the recommendation of your vet), then opt for the wet over the dry, or at least a mixture of both.

Hopefully this very verbose Royal Canin dog food review has offered you enough information to decide whether it’s right for your dog, and hopefully not left you baffled and banging your head on a wall.

Feel free to add any comments or questions below!

Ingredients

The ingredients of Royal Canin Active Adult dog food (at the time of review):

Dehydrated poultry protein, maize flour, maize, wheat flour, animal fats, dehydrated pork protein, wheat, hydrolysed animal proteins, beet pulp, fish oil, soya oil, yeasts, minerals, hydrolysed yeast (source of manno-oligo-saccharides). ADDITIVES (per kg): Nutritional additives: Vitamin A: 12000 IU, Vitamin D3: 800 IU, E1 (Iron): 46 mg, E2 (Iodine): 4.6 mg, E4 (Copper): 9 mg, E5 (Manganese): 60 mg, E6 (Zinc): 181 mg, E8 (Selenium): 0.12 mg – Preservatives – Antioxidants.

Guaranteed Analysis

The guaranteed analysis of Royal Canin Active Adult dog food (at the time of review):

Protein25%
Fat14%
Crude Fibre1.3%
Carbohydrates *Estimated 44.9%
* May be estimated. Read how to calculate carbohydrates in a pet food.

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6 Total Score
Mars Petcare's most "premium" brand

PROS
  • High standard of production and quality control
CONS
  • Formulated mostly with corn and wheat

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193 Comments
  1. I’ve changed my mind about a lot of foods including this one, never seen my girl as good as she was on this. I deleted over 600 notes in my notepad that were toxic dumpster fires, toxic waste and just pure toxicity. I am not going to boycott any brands anymore, except the obvious ones causing very obvious issues, like Blackhawk and Ivory Coat. I will be open minded and hopefully that will reduce my toxin levels to zero in time. It’s been a fun and destructive 10 years of research, I’m done for the most part in the research department, I’ve learned everything I need to know. Now I’m just gonna sit back and relax.

    • After trying multiple brands of dry food available at our petstore in the last 15 years i keep coming back to Royal Canin . Ive tried Iam’s , Eukanuba , Advance , Purina Proplan , Black Hawk , Hills Science , Optimum ( during covid lockdown ) , MFM , Ivory Coat , Savourlife and more that i can’t recall… I do realise the ingredients on paper aren’t the best but I can’t argue with the results in the flesh . Stools are always consistent, they don’t stink like some other brands , their coats look amazing , our Labrador would get irritated paws on some other brands and all 3 of mine on it love it but i must admit they aren’t fussy eaters . We have a Boxer , Labrador and a Rottweiler all being fed their breed specific Royal Canin . We also had great results with Royal Canin Maxi for these doggos but yeah atm they’re on individual breed specific Royal Canin .

  2. I think your reviews are great. Would be terrific if you could
    select the ones you find the best

  3. Unfortunately, the Royal Canin is the only brand that produces huge kibbles for large dogs, and my Rottweiler loves them. He’s a very picky bow and is not keen on eating pea-sized Vetalogica or Acana kibbles.

    • Reply
      Pet Food Reviews (Australia) April 12, 2022 at 3:28 pm

      Hi Leo, there’s a few other options for Large Breeds – Meals for Mutts, Diamond Naturals, Holistic Select (includes Giant Breed I think), Earthborn, Wellness, SavourLife etc.

  4. Thank you for your great input. After the unexpected death of one of our dogs, we’re starting to dig a bit more into premium brands and different diets. Hopefully, the days of unregulated pet food in Australia are numbered.

  5. Still think nutritionists are employed to create formulas for these companies think again, it’s a machine not a human. https://truthaboutpetfood.com/who-really-formulates-pet-food/?fbclid=IwAR3QpA-_LUl08vq7Xoh6ISa4apBNgBj3wLK7dDU93sqUvx1usnq3k3VCcVg

    • Thank you for all the helpful advice. It’s a minefield trying to navigate what’s best to feed your pet and your information is excellent. Based on your reviews my whippet puppy is getting Lyka, Frontier and Taste of the Wild in place of Royal Canin which was recommended by the breeder and my vet.

    • Surely there must be a number of studies on what dogs eat in the wild, but I would be very surprised if wild packs of dogs or wolves ate a high percentage of carbohydrate unless starving. I am going to slowly move my whippet pup over to meat based diet.

  6. My Beagle mix is currently on Royal Canin medium adult and prime 100 cooked rolls and doing fine, However she has always had a anal gland issue (they leak out twice a week.. i know yuck!) And I’m thinking of trying grain free to see if that helps the issue. Problem is her stomach is very sensitive and she cannot tolerate a huge amount of peas or lentils and she gets the runs with fish/seafood. although can handle a little fish oil. She cannot have Raw as that also made her very sick.
    Any recommendations? she also has a tendency to put on weight so cannot be high in fat.

    • I only glossed over the discussion with Edanna here but don’t think this has been mentioned yet. Meals for mutts have announced the removal of peas from all of their formulas beginning this month, so that might open up some pea-free options for you once it hits the shelves.

      • That’s a good idea to only gloss over it because haha I wrote so much! I went in all sense of the word rather crazy, especially in my latest post.

      • Oh that’s Great! thanks i did not know that.
        We had a bag of meals for mutts that we gave to our other dog i did not try Lola on it because of the peas and lentils. But the removal of peas might actually perk my interest!

    • Sounds very much like my Rusty well my mums haha, he goes wherever she goes after all. Anyways sounds very similar to him but he’s okay with lots of oils.

      I’d get off the Royal Canin that food is nothing but trouble, when Rusty was just on my mums homemade and the kibble I had not really researched as I was new to researching back then and I made a lot of mistakes, he had severe anal gland issues. You could smell him everywhere he went and when we were at a friends house that wasn’t very pleasant for anyone.

      The first thing I tried wasn’t even kibble, I threw the old kibble out and took a dive and tried K9 Natural, best decision ever, his limp disappeared on that food and he started looking a lot better.
      I’ve just gone and made a mistake, my memory of those days is quiet broken, I think it was Ziwipeak that I tried first instead and then the K9.

      I would then go on to try their canned foods, tripe sand eventually lots of different kibbles. Ivory Coat, Blackhawk, Artemis, ToTW and I’d buy the different formulas and stuff to see what worked and what didn’t. Got Meals for Mutts now and that’s really good, but it’s oil heavy, good oils but not every dog can handle that much.

      I found Artemis and MfM to be the best ingredient wise, Blackhawk was better then it is now, Ivory Coat based on Susan is like cardboard, ToTW is toxin heavy the clean label project tested it and it’s bad.

      Truth be told the pet cancer series got me off wanting to give too much kibble, I give an amazing variety to Rusty these days, K9 tripe in a bag or can, Ziwipeak venison air dried and canned, FrontierPets 2 chicken balls and 1 pork ball, Supernaturals lamb and emu treats for the coconut and emu oil wicked on tear stains. He also gets this moisture mix for his heart health and it helps with other things too, including keeping him in tip top shape health wise.
      Rusty’s moisture mix
      Greens powder, spirulina, barley grass, wheatgrass, chlorella.
      Turmeric
      Pepper
      Sweet paprika
      Ginger
      Natural animal solutions, oil pump, digestive powder.
      Meals for Mutts probiotic powder
      Liver sprinkles on occasion
      Kefir or yogurt.

      FrontierPets chicken might be worth a try in place of the kibble, it’s extra low fat at only 3.58%, it’s freeze dried and uses sweet potatoes as the carb source. No peas and no fish oil.

      • Oh wow thanks for the info!
        I generally just feed the royal canin in the morning and she gets the prime 100 cooked roll at night along with a fresh carrot and Brussels sprout (she’s a weirdo.. loves the brusells LOL) she is 3 years old now and has had the anal gland issues since she was a puppy, But it seems lately it’s gotten worse and i have to manually squeeze the glands every week.. which is not nice for her or me.
        Her tummy was that bad a year ago that she was on medication off and on for months due to colitis, she’s been fine since feeding the prime 100. But i was just wanting to try something different and new as she gets sick of eating the same thing twice a day.
        She also has luxating patellas in both knees so it’s crucial i watch her weight (vet said if she gained weight he wouldn’t be happy LOL) I also made a batch of turmeric golden paste.. have yet to try her on it yet. (she’s also on cosequin DS for the knee issue)
        The FrontierPets looks perfect for her, so i will buy the smaller bag and test it out 🙂
        I think i may need to skip the Ziwipeak as it has the New Zealand Green Mussel and that gives her the runs big time.. she had a mussel supplement and her tummy was in turmoil.

        • I found the supplements very different to the actual ones found in Ziwipeak. I tried the Sasha’s Blend one on both dogs, very small amounts I might add, nothing happened to Angel but Rusty was another matter altogether. My mum had said to stop giving him the joint powder as he woke up, was severely unsettled and panting. Odd but obviously he reacted to something or the dose was just too much even though it barely fit on a spoon.

          He’s able to consume the Ziwipeak to no such ill effects unlike the powder, it’s rather odd indeed, but I’m also one of those who are odd when it comes to supplements. If I have too much turmeric day in and day out my pudendal neuralgia flares like crazy, while others can have 1-2 capsules a day for 30 years, to each their own I guess.

          But unless your sure you can give it back if something happens then Ziwipeak is rather expensive to test.

          I think the FrontierPets is your best bet, Di is very helpful and if you have any concerns she’ll be happy to answer them. At this point in time K9 isn’t worth buying as their venison stock is low and the rest of their foods are very high fat even the chicken, the only thing I can buy from them now is the tripe.

          The turmeric paste is a good idea, but be careful with the coconut oil, it may be too much to handle, turmeric and pepper are just as good, you can always add a little olive oil instead to help the turmeric, forgot the word legit it’s gone lol. I’ll think about it, but I think you get the idea, I hope haha. The oil helps the turmeric do something in the body, it doesn’t need to be coconut, they suggest olive oil if coconut cannot be handled and they always suggest small amounts to see how the dog reacts.

          You’d be surprised but people on Facebook actually tried the full on recipe of the turmeric paste and gave the full dose straight away XD, their dogs kept them up all night with vomiting and diarrhea.

        • I can try to Ziwipeak.. if it does not agree with my girl (Lola) then i have another dog that will eat it, so it will not go to waste.
          The supplement she was on before was Technyflex it had a very strong fishy odour and Lola had a weeks worth of diarrhoea. She does fine on the Cosequin though.
          I did make the paste with coconut oil.. but i will only give Lola a tiny bit, if she gets sick i will just use that batch for myself (even though i HATE the smell LOL) and try something else for her.
          I got a surprise this week as i tried the prime 100 Kangaroo and pumpkin roll instead of the Turkey and flaxseed.. she actually did really good on the Kangaroo, even though Kangaroo jerky makes her throw up.. sometimes she has me baffled LOL

        • Different process I guess, ones cooked the other is raw dried. Kangaroo is s good meat though, low fat, high protein, good amount of omegas for dogs with seafood allergies. The Sasha’s Blend smelt like mussels, so not fishy, but clearly way to much for Rusty or like I said maybe he reacted to the abalone or shark cartlidge.

          If she’s okay on the Frontier the turmeric won’t be necessary as I asked what turmeric Frontier was using and Di told me it was the turmerical so that’s turmeric with pepper and coconut oil, so essentially powdered turmeric paste.

          Maybe mix it into a tea or coffee? I’ll show you what I make everyday, of course omit the turmeric everyday because flare ups are not fun!

          Cinnamon
          Cayenne pepper
          Turmeric
          Pepper
          Ground Cloves
          Fennel seeds
          Coriander seeds ground
          Maca powder
          Manuka honey
          Star anise
          Cumin seed ground
          Cardamom seed powder
          Nutmeg powder
          Coriander powder
          Ground ginger
          Blackstrap molasses, makes me dizzy D:
          Coconut cream powder
          Sweet paprika.

        • Thanks i might give the turmeric a go in coffee, I will be making some Irish stew today so i may add some of the paste to that also.
          That’s great about the turmeric in the frontier.. i really hope she does well on it, I will be buying some today so fingers crossed!
          Would you recommend giving her some sort of kibble with the frontier? I will still be using the prime 100 rolls also as i have a few in the freezer. Do you think the anal gland issue might be grain related or just the fact she cannot express them herself properly? Her poops have been firm but still she has the gland issue.

        • Because I am known for my walls of text and because people can’t see the edited version of a message unless they go to the website specifically, I’ll add this extra here.

          Dr Karen Becker
          Susan Thixton of The Truth About Pet Food
          Rodney Habib

          On Facebook or using their websites if you prefer, you can follow these guys, they have a boat load of interesting things you can read to better equip yourself with pet knowledge.

          Also this new pet cancer series.
          https://go2.thetruthaboutcancer.com/pet-docuseries/episode-4/?gl=5ac79f08210d2a756329f456

          They are already on episode 4 out of 7, but at the end they usually bring back all 7 episodes for 24 hours and you can catch up.

        • My biggest mistake was the type of research I did, I don’t have the best memory but I still had a pretty good one when I started researching 6 years ago, instead of just ingredients I should have researched dog conditions and how to treat them naturally, but yeah I didn’t, I’ve only just started doing that.

          In light of the above I simply stated what helped with Rusty’s anal gland issues but I don’t know what necessarily causes them and whether grain free will necessarily help. Although Dr Karen Becker linked it on Facebook a few times, what it is, how to deal with it, I never really read it, because I no longer felt I had too.
          So for actual info someone who knows more would have to reply or you’d have to go research it yourself on Becker’s and maybe others websites. Sorry.

          With both foods being considered complete, you don’t need to feed a kibble, currently the best kibble in my eyes for the price and digestibility is Meals for Mutts but like I said it’s oil heavy and may not be a good fit. Then Artemis has lentils so that doesn’t work either.

          I think if she can have the Frontier, the Ziwi and the Prime roll, that she’s got more then enough, different vitamins, minerals and meat proteins that she has no need for kibble. I think it’s best we see how she goes and then go from there.

          Because Frontier absorbs water, will she drink a soup like mixture? you could go on to add some extras like the turmeric and a greens powder to that water if she’d be interested in it. I know that no matter what I add to Rusty’s bowl he eats it, like a pro haha. This is all the food mixed together that he gets from me and then later he gets a smaller portion of homemade from mum. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/de7fc5829d3f745b6eda252e4a405dccd43c8e9d25fd70d95ee905d5ebda0494.jpg

        • Thanks for the reply,
          I just ordered the trail bad so I’m crossing my fingers she likes it.
          As for the soup consistency, I’m not sure if she will eat it or not but if it smells good to her she probably will.
          I did once buy her a super greens powder.. she sort of knocked it back LOL. The one we tried was from green pet.
          We also tried the Augustine’s SuperBoost but that gave her the runs. We tried the Glandex chews for her glands.. they didn’t help and she hated them too LOL
          It’s been a trial and error with my girl, First 2 years my Mum did nothing but feed her chicken breast throughout the day, once i put a stop to that her poops got firmer and she lost a kilo. (too much fat) Then we tried a few supplements then we got her into training classes.. which needed nothing but high value treats.. so she went backward again LOL Then the trainer suggest i put her onto prozac for her anxiety and reactivity issues.. well what they didn’t tell me was the side effects was loss of appetite, basically she didn’t eat hardly anything for 6 weeks, Needless to say i stopped the meds and changed trainers! The one and only “magical breakthrough” Food for us was the prime 100, I’m so glad i found that food. But now she is getting bored with prime 100 🙁
          As for her glands, I really think she may just have oddly positioned glands maybe that’s why they don’t empty without help.. in any case my vet just suggested regular expressing.. which she hates.
          Picture of my girl Lola below 🙂 (the little one is her recently adopted sister Gracie) https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c7fd73427111434a3d4a05217222ffb5a3a7deef23b052b2e6105e455ea14b63.jpg

        • My mum all she fed was just chicken, rice and veggies, this for a dog is not balanced long term feeding, he was very unhealthy, I’m glad I started researching when I did or he may not have been here now or likely on a variety of meds.

          The anxiety and reactivity reminds me of Angel, she’s deathly afraid of dogs, people, flies. She also has what Susan believes might be IBS but who knows. So she screams in pain quiet often and hides all day.

          She’s beautiful, I wish I could place a nervous or other item on Angel but our dogs, you can’t place anything on them.
          Rusty will not move, Angel will thrash and roll over constantly until she gets the thing off her, she’ll also wet herself in the process, that’s what happened at the vets, they put a leash on her and it was crazy.

          Sorry for the long reply at the shops, I had to put my iPad away at some point mid typing.

        • We have been through allot with my girl and she is only 3, Her reactivity and anxiety i think is a result of her being pulled away from her mother at an early age.. we have had her since 4 weeks old, the breeder wanted them gone and they were no longer with their mum.
          luckily my girl will let me do anything with her.. including doing them glands which she hates but just stands there and lets me. Gracie the other girl is extremely skittish and runs when you try to pick her up, must of been abused before we got her poor thing. I tried the home cooked meals with Lola but i felt i could never get it balanced and she did have loose stools as a result.

        • They certainly should not leave any earlier then 6 weeks, the longer the better and also waiting till the dog fully grows up before desexing means less problems with behaviour.

          I don’t have any doubt that Angel may of come from a bad breeder, she did after all sell her to us at full price with 2 hernias, the hernias were sewn up when she was desexed, her healing period was very long, so I think not only bad breeder but generally not very good health wise either. I do think she’d be bounced from house to house though, I feel we were meant to adopt her, because other people just wouldn’t be bothered with her problems and she’s also very picky with food, wants something different everyday.

          I forgot to link the greens powder I use, we were looking at trying to get good airfares, but upon returning home the prices we got actually weren’t that great. Airline stuff is really difficult, never thought it would be this bad, guess I was wrong.
          From Woolworths it’s $20 I got mine half price, Republica Greens. https://www.republicaorganic.com.au/products/organic-superfoods-greens-mix-4-x-125g-bags

          The turmeric I got lucky with also $5 for a big bag, half price essentially. If it’s half price and you use it or your dog could use it then buy it I always say, because it’s very rarely ever half price.

          I’ve got to start watching that cancer series, I hope I didn’t miss episode 3… so forgetful! I’ll listen to it while I farm something on a game, best way to watch it for me without getting bored. Good luck with the food, report back here on how she goes. That she’s beautiful I wrote was for your pup, it looked like I said it for my pup, wrote it not in the best way.

        • Ideally i wish she would of stayed with her mum until she was 10 weeks, We work through her little problems together and she has come a long way in terms of her reactivity.
          By the sounds of it your girl come from a bad situation also which is so sad 🙁 Luckily you come along and rescued her 🙂
          Thanks for the green powder link, will look into it. The bag of turmeric i got was from woolworths on sale for $6 i saw it on sale and just brought it.. i always buy things if i see them on sale LOL. (probably stuff i don’t even need Haha) I will definitely report back after i see how she goes on the frontier. Hopefully she does well on it.
          If i do end up buying her kibble again at some stage weather it be grain free or not, What do you think of these
          Canidae Grain Free Pure Sky (i know it has peas but no lentils.)
          Nutro Wholesome Essentials Adult Dog Chicken & Rice Formula
          Nutra Gold Turkey & Sweet Potato

        • Canidae is good, Nutra is a not very much cheaper version of Taste of the Wild the foods found to have a lot of toxins, Nutro based on Susan is pretty good not a fan myself because Mars makes it and if you follow Susan Thixton you can see what I mean about why I don’t like or trust Mars to make anything good. Although if you haven’t read anything yet they put euthanised dogs and cats in their cheap foods, the workers have all sorts of issues and Mars fires them if they complain. Plus other issues.

          I’m pretty sure Canidae did really well with toxins, it would be my pick over the other two.
          If Blackhawk hadn’t changed it’s recipes I’d say it was a good one, but it’s since gone downhill and has a lot less of the tear stain remover emu oil. That and any fish recipe is usually very high in toxins and I only used the fish and potato.

          So many kibbles become almost non existent when dogs have allergies eh? Susan is currently having issues with Patch and finding a food he can handle, after going downhill on the Taste of the Wild, it’s been very steep climbing. I think she has him on the Wellness Core now, not sure how he’s doing I’ll have to ask, it’s been a few days and with Patch a few days can mean a lots changed.

          Wellness Core line are good, but I think the whole line tested bad for toxins, I’ll need to check clean label again to remind myself lol.

        • I also liked the look for the Canidae Chicken And Rice because no fish and peas further down on the list but it’s never in stock.

        • This is the testing they did, yours is 3 out of 5 has some contaminants issues, which is interesting because you said it doesn’t contain fish, so what’s contaminating it? maybe the grains? https://www.cleanlabelproject.org/?s=Canidae&product_category=0&post_type=product

          I had a look myself it’s out of stock on Pet Circle, while Warehouse doesn’t appear to have it at all.

          You’d think if it’s sold out it means it’s selling really well, so make more of it, maybe their maxed out with also making it overseas who knows.

          Earthborn is coming out with new Venture lines, maybe 1-2 months away, made with chickpeas but the fibre is crazy on every formula except the turkey, Rusty has pancreatitis relapse when he has too much fibre, so high fibre is not very good for dogs.

          I guess you’ll either have to find it at a pet store or just go for one of the other formulas, if this was America you’d be spoiled for choice they have like 4000 didn’t formulas to choose from, from like 450 different brands. Numbers not 100% I tried to find on dog food advisor where the numbers are but I don’t know, he even removed it or I just can’t find it. Last I checked it was up to 3500 foods so it’s very likely 4000 by now and the 450 was like 425.

        • Oh wow ok, I did hear something about the euthanasia drug being found in dog food that’s absolutely disgraceful and shocking!
          When Lola was a puppy i did try her on taste of the wild, she ate it for a couple of days then absolutely refused to touch it after that.. it was a huge bag too. (the bison i think)
          Did wellness have any issues with their products a couple of years ago? I ask because i tried my previous dogs on wellness (i think it was the complete health fish one) it made the dogs sick so i gave the bag to my dad and he fed his beagles that food and made them sick also. I did try Lola on wellness i think it was the simple one.. it gave her tummy trouble. So i would be interested in seeing how patch handles the Wellness core because i have yet to try that. It’s extremely hard finding a good food for a dog with sensitivities, Gracie our other girl can eat anything and not get sick (although she got sick from eating Roo poop LOL)

        • Other then a lawsuit for high containment’s in their food I’m not sure, at least we’re not having recall after recall like in the USA. The big pet food companies Purina and Mars are going on Witch Hunts for raw food because it contains bacteria and they don’t want people to feed raw because their not making any money off it. Wrote a comment of here’s an idea make better food and you’ll have your sales back, cause clearly their loosing people to raw food, had like 10 upvotes, well because it was true.

          Oh I also forgot to add Dr John Robb of Protect the Pets to the list of people you should be interested in, he’s opening up clinics for affordable vet care and affordable titer testing instead of straight up vaccines. Especially for dogs who don’t need to be overdosed when their already protected and for dogs who are sick and vets continue to push yearly vaccines onto those people. It clearly on the vaccine says don’t give to sick animals. But $$$ are ruling, pets be damned. If a pet gets cancer or dies from the vaccine it’s also apparantly your fault, read a few reviews like this which was disgraceful.
          Vets titer themselves because they know that vaccine overdose is a serious complication, but yet they push vaccine after vaccine to dogs and say it’s safe. Not sure where the logic went on that one. If you tell the big corporations how you feel or whoever he was in a meeting with, they will laugh at you and ignore you, instead doing things on their phones. That video might still be on Facebook, it was absolutely apalling.

          Could of been a bad batch, or like clean label shows heavy metal contamination as it can appear as a normal bout of sickness at first before progressing into organ failure.

        • Ok must of been a bad batch.. Luckily petbarn did give my money back for that bag. Although i do not shop at petbarn often because they are a rip off.
          I have heard about the over vaccination, i always thought you did it yearly until my vet actually said Lola does not need any more for 3 years.. so i have a good vet! Our vets are housecall vets, they were at a clinic then started their own housecall business have been our vets for over 12 years now. I never vaccinated my previous boy because the vet told me not to as he had a
          immune and blood disorder then later developed diabetes, I home cooked his meals and he lived for over 14 years.
          I’m lucky enough to have a vet that i absolutely trust.. he never pushes things onto you.
          I 100% agree that the big dog food companies need to start making better food, as it’s no wonder the amount of raw feeder and home cooked feeders are growing (just wish i could do the same for my girl.) I was shocked with the recent Advance dog food recall, even though it’s not proven to be from the food it’s very sad. Lola should have the Frontier food by Wed/Thursday as it got shipped today 🙂 Is it just me or is getting new dog food exciting? LOL

        • It’s very exciting haha, I’m always wondering how Rusty and Angel will act when I open it and how they act when I add it to their bowls. If it will be liked or ignored. They actually have proven facts somewhere that mega don’t know how to spell it lol is caused from a toxin in food, starts with A I think.

          The only food that Rusty ever ignored was the entire Frontier ball, I’ve had to mash them up in a zip lock bag or he won’t eat it. He also totally ignored and spat out whole mussels, both dried and rehydrated.

          Even 3 years was said to be unneeded, you should ask how much titering would cost, usually dogs have protection for 7 years to life.

          They are getting all the same diseases we are now, the food, the lifestyle and the vaccines are the number 1 reason with genetics only playing 10%.

        • I will definitely look into the titer test, She got vaccinated last September so not due for a while now.
          I did write a reply before about prime 100 but it’s not been approved yet (must be the link i included) But i was wondering if Susan has tried the prime 100 rolls? They are incredibly popular for dogs with IBD so popular in fact the local petstock cannot keep them in stock.. have to put a order in.
          They have a few flavours now and are announcing something big very soon.. maybe another type of food or a new flavour. They also have raw food as well as the cooked rolls.

        • The rolls have tapioca so Patch can’t have it, he can’t have a lot, he’s a very sick dog sadly, she was going to put him down because he’s that bad, but the vet wanted to try some stuff first.

          I saved to my notepad a few things Susan wrote to me about a Patch, there will be some stuff that’s mentioned twice. He has IBD, acid reflux
          Can’t have barley, tapioca, beet pulp, too much bone, chickpeas, lentils.
          No chicken.
          Yes & boiled rice gets sloppy poo if I add boiled rice to cooked meal but he can have grounded rice in a kibble but starts to smell yeasty smell when he eats oats & rice, He needsto be feed a raw diet I think he may have been feed a raw diet before I got him & a cheap supermarket kibble cause he knows what raw is & when I first got him I feed him chicken necks then teh vet said chicken necks are just fat & bone no good he must of been having problems with something I cant rememeber we were always at teh vets when I first get him.
          I bath my boy 7-10 days, he has seasonal environment allergies & food sensitivies to chicken, barley, tapioca, corn gluten meal, oats, there’s probably more ingredients he can’t eat..

          Maybe that something new might be a better fit for Patch, I guess we’ll see and I guess it depends if Patch will be stable until that time.

          With the 10 weeks you mentioned earlier for the puppies, that actually sounds about right, even 6 weeks is too early, 8 as a minimum but 10 is heaps better. They will have better behaviours and will be healthier in the long run, well provided the mum isn’t on something like moist and meaty (USA). Beneful is similar but still heaps better then that junk.

          https://www.amazon.com/Purina-Moist-Meaty-Cheddar-216-Ounce/dp/B0007A67SC

          Look at those reviews! look at the ingredients lol.

          Because we’re pet food regulars we can post links without approval, newcomers can eventually get approval for instant links. Well I’m an insane regular, look up any of the reviews I’m there!
          I used to be super regular on dog food advisor until the people all become d**ks and reported you for preferring to treat things homeopathically of holistically instead of commercially. Calling me and others like me Holistic nuts, among other colourful words.

          The one thing from Prime that Patch didn’t react badly too was the crocodile bones. But then that’s 1 ingredient so yeah.

        • Oh that’s so sad about poor patch, Thought i would ask about the prime anyway. Poor patch! 🙁
          OMG! Soy Grits, High Fructose Corn Syrup Yellow 6, Red 40, Yellow 5 that’s nuts! Who would feed that to their dog.. according to the reviews a sad 442 people do 🙁 100% Complete & Balanced Nutrition my bum!
          I feed Royal Canin but it’s no where near that bad. I only started feeding Lola the Royal Canin because it’s the only one i tried she did well on. But yeah Purina should be ashamed of themselves! I tried Lola on the Crocodile and it gave her tummy upset.. should of known because fish and seafood does not agree with her.

        • Two sugars, the really bad ethoxyquin that they’ve talked about in the cancer series, the dyes that cause cancer and hyperactivity, they also age your dog faster because their bad for mental health.

          Royal to me is overpriced junk food, it’s made solely from either corn, rice or soy and it’s a part of the Mars brand.
          Also corn and soy can wreak havoc on a dogs insides, it will cause diabetes eventually and soy disrupts the hormones, cancer will eventually happen, then you’ve got issues with some foods still containing Mendione Bisulphate or phite damned names haha, that synthetic vitamin K3 causes liver failure.

          I’d ponder why they still allow the use of such ingredients, but as long as they get money from trash they don’t care. Money is the only voice they hear.

          This next bit is long but Robb he put up a boycotting of Mars products, these are the brands under their name.

          Boycott Mars!
          Corporate Veterinary Hospitals
          Veterinary Centers of America (VCA)
          Banfield the Pet Hospital
          Blue Pearl Veterinary Centers
          3 Musketeers
          Arj
          Bounty
          Celebrations
          Cirku
          CocoaVia
          Combos
          Dolmio
          Dove
          Ebly
          Ethel M
          FLAVIA
          Fling
          Flyte
          Galaxy
          Galaxy Bubbles
          Galaxy Minstrels
          goodnessknows
          Kudos
          A Twix bar
          M-Azing
          M&M’s
          Maltesers
          Marathon
          Mars
          Masterfoods
          Milky Way
          Minstrels
          Munch
          Promite
          Revels
          Seeds of Change
          Snickers
          Topic
          Tracker
          Treets
          Twix
          Uncle Ben’s Rice
          5 (gum)
          Airwaves
          Alpine
          Altoids
          Big Red
          Bubble Tape
          Doublemint
          Eclipse
          Eclipse Ice
          Excel
          Extra
          Freedent
          Hubba Bubba
          Juicy Fruit
          Life Savers
          Lockets
          Orbit
          Ouch!
          Skittles
          Spearmint
          Starburst
          Surpass
          Tunes
          Wrigley’s
          Winterfresh
          Products for pet consumption Edit
          ADVANCE (Australia and New Zealand only)
          Aquarium Pharmaceuticals
          Buckeye Nutrition
          Cesar
          Chappi
          Dreamies
          Eukanuba
          Exelpet
          Frolic
          Good-o
          Greenies
          Iams
          James Wellbeloved
          Kit-e-kat
          My Dog
          Natura
          Nutro Products
          Pedigree
          Optimum
          Pill Pockets
          Royal Canin
          Schmackos
          Sheba
          Spillers
          Teasers
          Techni-Cal
          Whiskas
          Winergy
          Wisdom Panel MX Mixed Breed DNA Test.

          I was hoping Patch would get better on the pork Frontier but last I heard from Susan he wasn’t doing too well, he has issues with turmeric and carrots as well and the food contains those.

          I’ve gone over a lot of foods and I think at this point in time Susan has tried almost everything and he gets better at first and then goes from bad to worse. I was angry at some point, when Susan said she wanted to euthanise him, because I had figured she hasn’t tried everything yet and he has nothing to loose to try a few different things. Unfortunately a lot of what I mentioned to her he can’t have, she has trouble understanding what I write so it was frustrating at first, but eventually I realised that he’s tried everything I’ve mentioned and it made things worse and I had to accept that, even if it was hard.

          Helping people help their pets can be rewarding but it can also be frustrating and you can get very angry very fast, I feel the reward of helping at least 1 dog a day or even a week is better then if I had not of helped at all, I do what I can, but people also have to be willing to try new things and be open to change.

        • I did reply to this before but i did the mistake of adding another link and it’s still pending.. so ignore any other reply but this one LOL

          You are Helping me and for that i thank you! I have read through countless reviews and facebook dog nutrition groups that do nothing but argue so i know what you say about frustration is very real.
          The sole reason i posted here is to try and find something more healthy other than royal canin, Luckily she only eats it for one meal a day but i am eager to try something else and hopeful frontier works.. if it were not for you telling me i would of either not of known about frontier or skipped it completely.
          That’s a long list of products there, i never knew Mars made that much stuff!
          Rules out a a large portion of dog food brands right there, I will skip on that Nutro wholesome food i mentioned.. as many reviews on consumer affairs state nutro either killed or made their dog sick.the Best rated food on that
          consumer affairs website is Canidae. Lola did ok on their chicken puppy formula so i may bite the bullet soon and see if the pure sky is ok.. I’m just concerned about the fat content being a little higher and it does have peas and Duck which she has not had much of before. Canidea do have a few chicken forums but unfortunately have either fish meal or lentils in them, the wild boar and pure land look interesting but again have chickpeas and peas. Did i mention it’s hard finding a good food? LOL
          The Frontier food will be here today so i will give her some tonight and see how it goes. I gave her some oatmeal yesterday (wholemeal oats) And she did fine on that. She had extra energy this morning and basically pulled me the whole 40 minutes of our walk then come home and tore up some toys and wanted to play.. no idea if the oats made her a little hyper but something sure did.

        • Yeah and I’m having fun doing so(helping you), I get to tell you everything I’ve learnt! and it creates huge walls of text but that’s okay because it needs to be mentioned somehow.

          I guess you’ll be becoming Susan soon with so many foods but nothing really to choose from because no this no that haha.
          I too have issues finding new foods, I like to sometimes try new things for Rusty to up his variety, but new foods come out and I can’t change anything because the ingredients list has something I don’t like or it’s very expensive for what it is or it’s the exact same formula as any other food just with added fruits or something.

          Kinda makes you wonder if they even bother to check what other foods are on the market and formulate a little differently, that also makes you wonder if their only in it to cash in to the big money pet food can make you. A dog specific kibble would be nice, like your dog has trouble with these ingredients so a kibble is made especially for your dogs allergies, but I’ve never even heard of anyone doing this not with kibble anyways.

          With the Frontier just because it’s new I’d start at 2 balls and see how she goes and maybe wait a week before you increase it to 3 and so on, it’s low fat but at the end of the day it’s still (new) so slowly does it.

          I’ve had some pretty good energy increases on oats before so I have no doubt that they helped her.

          Mars does own a lot, they own the entire line of Banfield pet hospitals too, you can go read some reviews and you can easily find out that the staff don’t really care about you and that the vets are mostly not even real vets yet and can carelessly kill your dog and will even lie to you about how your pet died. They also push vaccines like crazy and they will give your pet like 6 shots in one go and it’s usually after someone first says no but then the vets get rude and they give in. So kind of makes you think their purposely giving your pet 6 shots because their angry that you first said no.

          So on top of most of the supposed vets know nothing about pets yet, they ask people to pay giant amounts for procedures that cost sometimes 70% less at a true vet and they have this wellness plan that you have to keep paying even if you don’t have your pet anymore, cancelling was impossible for some people, so now you know from these reviews that people left that they are in it to make quick cash, not to actually help your pet.

          Finding someone you can trust at a pet food store like what Susan did is a good idea when your pet has food allergies or issues with ingredients, you can tell the person the entire story and they can help you pick a food or you can tell them I’d like to try a few myself but if it doesn’t agree with her can I bring it back and try something else? Susan has brought back a lot of food, she even had some food marked down for her as it wasn’t on special and she didn’t want to pay $88 for 5kg which is insane, Wellness Core is damned pricy. You can get 20kg Meals for Mutts for like $117.

          She said Patches paws are really red and he’s started limping, so I think the chicken in the food was a bad idea, I reckon that she just shouldn’t give him chicken if he’s allergic to it, but I see her reason for doing it anyways, because she wants him to at least eat and keep down something.

          Facebook omg it’s crazy on there when it comes to food, people asking so what’s best and everyone suddenly rushes in with RAW! but you have to first ask the person are they actually capable of doing raw for their pets? I don’t think it’s very nice to just rush in and demand they feed raw or don’t own a dog if they can’t. We each have our dogs for different reasons and to say unless we feed our pet raw that we can’t continue to own our dog is wrong.

          I go over good kibbles, I mention raw and freeze dried and air dried and I let the person choose the food based on income and whether they want to handle the food or not, I’ve never pushed anything onto anyone, at least I don’t think I did, I have moods that change frequently sometimes when I’m angry or frustrated I tend to push things so maybe I’ve done it and because it’s not important I’ve forgotten.

          I’ve also changed as a person over the years, so it’s likely when I was more of a teenager, younger adult that I may of been quiet a bitch like this person me and Susan hate on dog food advisor haha, but as I grew with chronic pain and such you become a better person the longer your in pain for, it’s sad that it takes pain to change you, but I think it’s better then if you had not changed from who you were at all. 10 years and counting of Pudendal Neuralgia.

          Anyways I think I’ve written quiet enough for today, wouldn’t want to bombard you further =P

        • So the Frontier was a big hit taste wise! She went crazy when i opened the bag and devoured the 2 balls i gave her (mixed with a little water)
          So i will be on poop watch tomorrow haha.
          Hopefully she does well on it then i can maybe try the beef. What’s your opinion on pork? I have seen they have pork but i honestly have never fed any of my dogs pork.
          A dog specific food would be nice, But probably too expensive and i doubt anyone would ever do it.. But maybe they should!
          Oh i want to go where Susan shops LOL Our petbarn is basically useless and our petstock is ok but i have put orders in for prime 100 rolls before and they basically sold them to someone else.. i was not happy. We also have another pet store close by (stephmar) but they do not stock much at all.
          Petbarn staff here are really rude and they will not even order anything in for you.. too lazy to do so.
          Facebook is crazy, and i have seen a few people say raw or nothing, they shame you and make you feel guilty because your dog cannot handle raw that goes for some of the dog forums also, people can be nasty.
          Now that i am aware of the over vaccination i am 100% going to look into the titering test, and will also tell my family member about the test! Our dogs do not go to any kennels so no need to have them “up too date yearly vaccinated” It’s a shame some kennels call for it though.
          I know why Wellness core is pricey.. because it’s sold at petbarn LOL honestly every single thing i have ever brought there has been above retail price.
          Oh i have just stumbled across a sale on cosequin DS (save $20) gotta go order some now!
          Will let you know how Lola goes with her poops in the morning Haha.

        • That’s awesome! I’m happy she loved it. Based on Susan the beef was greasy but the pork wasn’t, my pork feels a little fatty when I pick it up but I’ve been giving Rusty 1 ball and he’s doing great so you could buy the pork and the chicken and use two chicken to two pork or something, different meat different vitamins yeah sounds like a plan. Your choice though.

          That’s good that you’ve learnt about over vaccinating and that you’ll be telling others about it, very important, maybe we can actually change the rules of over vaccinating if enough people talk about it.

          The dog specific could work but they’d have to have normal formulas on the side to make money from, because otherwise I could see it not working very well.

          Didn’t know Stefmar had a shop front, they have cheaper meds and vet diets, but it’s alwats best to try to treat the problem naturally before resorting to synthetics.

          They must be seriously lazy if even doing things on the computer is too much for them, they also clearly don’t care about their customers, their going to get shutdown if they continue to be rude, people won’t tolerate it and they will leave for another store or online. That would make sense that Wellness is expensive because of PetBarn haha.

          I’ve had people tell me when I wrote my dogs can’t have raw and trust me I’ve tried but it’s always vomiting and diarrhea, that I’m clearly doing it wrong because all dogs can eat raw… this just simply isn’t true, there are plenty who can’t handle raw and that’s okay, we do the best we can with what they can eat.

          The selling to someone else was just sad to read, but no surprise really.

          Okay well looking forward to hearing about tomorrow’s poop haha.

        • Ok so good news and bad news,
          She did not have any tummy troubles and had firm poop, However when i gave her 1 ball this morning she did not want it and only ate it because our other dog was after it 🙁 So there is no way she will have it for a full meal.. maybe just as a side dish LOL So back to trying to find a another royal canin alternative. 🙁

        • I’ve come to notice from reading reviews and my own personal experience with Rusty not going to mention Angel she’s on a whole other level lol. That they are usually very eager the first day or few days, but eventually if the food is big or annoying in any way they loose interest and don’t want to eat it anymore.

          Maybe if you have any ziplock bags you could try smashing it to smithereens haha and see if she prefers it that way? Rusty he didn’t eat the ball at all, he ignored it completely in it’s full glory heh, he ate around it and walked away seeing it only as a mere annoyance to eat around.

          Could be worth a try, I mean you’ve got nothing to loose with just 1 ball.

          I wonder if she’d have any interest in tripe, if you mixed it with the Frontier, I know that I’ve had people say to use it with Angel but she just walks away unimpressed. Rusty on the other hand licks his lips before eating the food especially if tripe is present, of course he’s also a food addict so just because he likes it doesn’t mean very much haha. You could buy like a can of it from K9 if it doesn’t work at least you didn’t spend $23 on a bag of freeze dried version. Do take note that it smells like someone left a poop near you haha.

          I have also noted that Royal tends to use MSG I’m sure of it as we once adopted an older pup but we have her back because she was severely malnourished and they probably sold her because they didn’t want the hassle. Anyways she came with the Royal Chihuahua food that she barely ate and I noticed the food smells heavily of soy sauce and is very greasy to the touch.

          It’s clear they add palatents to the food to make it taste awesome, she could be seeing the ball as food but since it lacks any real flavour she lost interest, hence why tripe might work, with the key word here being “might”. Mars when it comes to their foods are very very smart, they don’t want you to get off the food and they know exactly how to get a firm hold on you through your dog.

          With the chihuahua girl, I fed her all sorts of people food to get her to eat something and she loved polish dumplings the most, I tried several dog rolls the small ones and some trays but she wasn’t interested in them at all.

          We took her to our vet who said she’s not getting any vital nutrients and gave us a gel to apply to her mouth that would feed her body with everything she needed. A day later though we got the people to come pick her up and told her to feed the tube I also gave her pointers on dog food based on what I knew at the time, which I’m glad was at least something.

          She never paid us back for her, but I do hope she went on to live a healthy life and if not then she’s happier now then she was living here especially the way she was, I feel she would of been best suited as a home cooked dog but some people just can’t commit to that.

          Good luck with whatever you choose to try next with Lola and I hope it works better this time, but I would definitely suggest you try the smashing it up part.

        • I’m going to smash the ball up tonight so see how it goes, She will most likely eat it because she is more hungry at night then in the mornings.
          I just got done cooking her a little oats and steamed a carrot for her dinner also.. she stands there and waits for the carrot to cook LOL.
          Royal Canin does smells like soy sauce..i think it’s like a mixture of soy sauce and Vegemite and it is greasy so it’s probably why Lola loves the stuff. My Mum had a joke with me last week, She saw a royal canin truck driving past and said Lola would love to hijack that truck LOL.
          I’ll get there eventually with her food, just a matter of finding the right substitute for the royal canin I know she can always eat the prime 100 for dinner with no issues and i believe that’s a better quality food.
          I will try the tripe, I read somewhere it’s loaded with digestive enzymes so that’s got to be good for her.

        • Just on the subject of synthetic vitamin K, how strong is that link to liver issues? I keep wondering every time I open a bag of Stay Loyal…

        • Here we were talking about vitamin K yesterday and I went onto dog food advisor and someone was talking about K3 just 10 hours ago, what a coincidence lol.

        • I do wonder as well if there’s important quality differences between the manufacturers of the various vitamin/mineral ‘packs’ which might be relevant here as well. We’ll never know I imagine, at least not in my lifetime while basic stuff like the long-term effects of the compounds they’re attempting to synthesize remain unclear, even if they do manage to do it without compromise. But if there is such a thing as vitamin packs intended for humans and a lesser grade for animals, I’d be curious to know who is buying what.

        • Yeah, you can tell lower quality right now by looking at what type of vitamins and minerals are used, if they are not chelated then they are run of the mill cheapest possible from China.

          Now the problem is chelated can also be from China, they are heaps better and the more greenery your pet food has the lower amount you need to use, but indeed we have no way of knowing if the packs are human grade or not.

          Hopefully this will be something that happens in the future, but unless we ask for it, I don’t think it will happen.
          The FDA and AAFCO are perfectly happy with us not knowing where anything comes from, they find us a bother when we start asking questions.

          I guess I will be the one who may or may not find out if anything changes as afterall I am still very young.

        • I wonder though if chelated is an automatic guarantee of quality. It’s more expensive no doubt, but if these vitamin guys operate along the same lines as so many other industries using the concept of ‘binning’, it seems quite possible that something which wound up in pet food was intended for a higher purpose but ultimately failed some QA measurement.

        • Very possible with big pharma and big pet food leading the charge in literally everything, even going so far as to wanting to be the face to look at for nutrition which is horrifying to even think about.

          Medicines and stuff not fit for humans go into a big bin and those are for pets, I could see it happening, I really could and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was actual.

        • Give it time, you young peeps may have to deal with crap like this in future. “Feed your dog Union Carbide supplements and you won’t need to worry about it dying when you use Union Carbide shampoo products!* **”
          *Union Carbide Terminator technology is a trademark of Union Carbide inc.
          **Any lack of death you experience while using the product may be purely coincidental.

        • Is that actually written somewhere? with a name like terminator I don’t see good results coming from it lol. Kind of gave me a good for terminator lol but I bet Foxtel doesn’t have it on today.

        • I was poking fun at the “Terminator” technology pioneered by Monsanto and now others. Essentially if you buy Monsanto genetically tweaked seed varieties, you can spray the hell out of your crop with glyphosate products (aka Roundup) to kill weeds. By some twist of fate, Monsanto sell that stuff too.

        • Well yes based on Susan Thixton and her followers, Monsanto do indeed own their own roundup, because you know, if you can make money off it they sell it lol. I just don’t see why there would be a need for so much money though? You buy a house a car and then other necessities and you need money to live but you don’t need billions, there’s like nothing you need that’s a necessity that requires that much money. Crazy to be honest.

        • It’s not so much a case of corporate individuals, it’s public companies whose only function is to deliver profit to their shareholders. That’s what they’re designed to do. And the moment those profits begin to waver, the shareholders (generally those lovely people all around us) will quickly vote for a new board that promises more aggressive profits with the subsequent returns. Monsanto cops their fair share and rightly so, but the same forces are driving Mars, Colgate, Nestle etc.

        • We also don’t know which K they use, you can also use K2 and K1 but I’m not sure if they are the same thing as 3. The same problem exists with Meals for Mutts, I asked them but the Facebook support doesn’t seem to know very much about the food lol. I use very little of the MfM though so it’s unlikely it would be enough to do any harm. I’d have to feed actual food amounts and over long term.

        • Everywhere I read people said to stay away from it and then on the Purina website under reviews I found a lot of liver issues with dogs. I think it’s best like we always tell people to rotate kibbles if they can’t feed anything else. I don’t think it would happen after just 1 bag, most of the people who had problems fed it for long periods.

        • You mentioned earlier that her number 2’s are already firm, short of somehow increasing the bulk I wonder if there’s anything more any diet can do to help re: glands. There’s at least one vet nurse who stops by here occasionally, hopefully she sees this and might have some suggestions based on prior experience.

        • Thanks for the reply, Yeah i was thinking of somehow making them more bulky i have heard oats are good for that, and it just so happens she loves oats so that’s a bonus. I have tried the pumpkin thing but to be honest she does better without it which leads me to think she does better with lower fibre and not high fibre.

        • Hi Dannielle. In relation to anal glands it can be related to the quality of food but firm stools do help the issue. Pretty much the lack of faecal bulk doesn’t allow the sphincter muscle to extend and thus the glands do not get expressed properly. A raw diet is the best way to increase faecal bulk. Raw bones every 2-3 days is an excellent natural source of faecal bulking and will give your dog those firm white stools. I recommend starting with small lean bones and increasing them in size slowly, also make sure your pup has access to plenty of fresh water. I’m also a big supporter of taking the bone off them before its been sitting in the sun for too long. Every dog is different and I find with my guys they have their bones anywhere between 1-3 hours before I remove them and throw them away. Stops them burying it too.

          Also whole grain oats are amazing at increasing faecal bulk so if bones aren’t an option then maybe you can add some pre-soaked oats to your pup’s food mix, disguise it in raw meat if you have to.

          I hope this helps Dannielle

          P.S. Pumpkin unfortunately doesn’t do much and neither does metamucil so please don’t listen to your vet if they give you this advice.

        • Amen on the Metamucil thing, I’ve had exactly that advice from a vet and it was useless. I was seeing better results unintentionally by feeding the Vets All Natural product on account of the large grains it contains.

        • Our vet said Benefiber which was also totally useless, that stuff never worked and neither did Psyllium husks.

        • I’ve tried Meta a few times, I was asked when I was younger around 14 to drink it day in and day out to help with the bathroom because back then I had severe pain going. It didn’t help the pain, in fact I don’t think it helped anything at all, I don’t know what I changed but I got better overtime and the pain lessened which was such a relief. I suffered with that pain almost every morning for at least 8 years.

          I tried it again a few months ago for something else and again it’s effects were spotty, I think they process it and it looses the good nutrients, because I’ve used two teaspoons of psyllium husk to a glass of water and by god that works wonders haha.

        • Thank you 🙂
          Bones unfortunately are not an option.. she had really bad tummy trouble with raw bones, She has had everything from chicken necks to chicken feet and every kind of beef bone has made her sick. However can tolerate the dried beef spare ribs which she gets every day.
          She does well on the oats so that’s definitely something i will add to her meals.
          I am trying to find a better dried food but it’s proving difficult with her sensitivities to allot of peas and lentils and her intolerance to fish/seafood.
          Just brought the frontier freeze dried food and she is not all that keen on it, back to the drawing board LOL.

        • Honestly with raw bones it’s something you have to introduce very slowly into the diet especially because she has been eating a grain heavy food like Royal Canin. Grains cause the stomach acid to go very alkaline which can cause tummy upsets the moment a heavy meat is introduced instead. If you are going to try raw bones again you must feed very small amounts of raw red meat in her diet for 7-10 days then increase the amount the following week before giving raw bones. I recommended starting with lamb or beef ribs cut singular and only giving them to your dog for about 1/2 hour. With anything sensitive tummy related you must do it very slowly over time.

          You’ll find that if you do it this way you will see less tummy upsets with raw bone feeding as the stomach PH will remain acidic and help kill off any bacteria naturally that your pup may encounter. Feeding dry food upsets this stomach PH and so you must make the change gradually over time to give the pup’s stomach acid time to normalise so you won’t get any upset bellies. I know it can be frustrating but with some patience you can transition IBS or even tummy sensitive dogs onto bones and a proper raw diet.

          I also recommend a probiotic to help with digestion if your pup suffers from a sensitive tummy. I do know Bark Naturals does a complete all natural product, MFM also does one to add to water if your pup doesn’t like the taste and Blackmoors Paw does one as well although I can’t remember the ingredients. Also I recommend some shark cartilage powder if you can sneak a little bit in without your girl having a reaction, it greatly aids in the repair of the gastro intestinal wall.

          I hope this helps Dannielle and the best advice I can give you for a pup with sensitive tummy is to be patient, you can normalise it but it may take awhile.

        • She was having protexin, do you recommend the other probiotics or is protexin ok?
          I am going to try and just sort out where to go from here but i really do want to try her on the bones again.. but like you said very slowly. Anything to get on top of this gland issue would be great. At the moment she needs to have them expressed weekly. I have left it longer than a week before and the stuff that comes out is very very thick and she scoots. Our vet has not been all that much help in terms of a diet for her.

        • I haven’t heard of the protexin but after looking at it it’s very similar to the MFM Intestinal Health Plus so I’m sure it’s fine. I personally use the bark naturals one but at the end of the day they all seem to do the same thing.

          Anal glands are a hell of a thing to get on top of and a lot of commercial pet foods that say they help with it don’t. I hope you can work something out, even if the bone thing doesn’t work out at least the oats will help with the bulking issue.

        • Thanks i will try the probiotic.
          She had oats last night and it definitely did bulk and firm her stool more than usual so i am hopeful it’s going to help!

        • Well it all depends on the vet and if they were willing to do their own research after school, because in reality they have about a 1 hour course on which foods to prescribe for what illness and that’s about it. But then I’ve seen even board certified nutritionist’s spouting the same food nonsense as normal vets, so I wonder what did they actually learn during all that time?

          You’ve also got fake Holistic and Homeopathic vets popping up, with the exact same knowledge as normal vets, they don’t even bother to mention natural ways to treat pets, same use of synthetics as normal vets, I think their just trying to cash in on it but anything they learn they don’t believe in anyways and so their fakes.

          Sad world we live in these days to be quiet honest.

        • I do love our vets and trust them with Lola’s life, however i will admit nutrition is something they do not know much about.. but Luckily they don’t push foods onto you like other vets do. In fact i can remember when i had my sick lab x the vet suggested something that they did not sell then when that did not work out they suggested homecooked.
          When we had a old diabetic terrier we were at a different vet, they said she needs hills prescription food and when she refused to eat it they said force feed her because she can’t have anything else. Sadly she passed not long after being diagnosed because those vets forgot to mention that you can home check their blood with a glucomiter instead wanted to charge us $200 twice a week to do it.
          My lab x lived 8 years with diabetes because our current vets gave us good advice and plenty of help. A good vet is hard to find, once you find them you hope they don’t retire LOL.

        • Cats and diabetes are good because putting them on a raw diet you can reverse it, you can lower the dosage for dogs with raw but I’ve never seen a dog reverse diabetes, based on the human diabetes series, humans can also reverse it with an immediate diet change. If you wait too long it won’t reverse in both humans and cats, I think the maximum wait period was mentioned to be no longer then 6 months.

          Raw is the only way to reverse it and manage it, there is no other way and I’ve done extensive researching of this, when I realised people needed help and I couldn’t help them because I hadn’t researched diabetes, then I did cancer and I was meant to do renal and cushings but I never got around to it.

          That above force feed her because there is nothing else was one prime example they had no idea how to treat the condition, they were simply telling you because whoever owns Hills told them to say that only their food will manage diabetes nothing else. I wonder how they don’t question high carbs for a diabetic, obviously when you look into it you see that diabetes requires a very low carb diet or managing the disease will be impossible and the pet will go blind and die sooner then necessary.

          Renal has a very similar issue, the vet diet is given with reduced protein, whereas they don’t require a reduction until the 2nd or 3rd stages of the disease, feeding reduced protein right from the start the cats lived pretty awful lives until their untimely deaths years before they actually had to die due to old age or some other issue.
          Wet food is very important for cats or they’ll develop a whole host of problems, be placed on a prescription diet that puts a bandaid on an open wound, it’ll look like the diets working at first but then slowly your pet will get sicker and sicker and then they’ll suddenly be dead and the food was the culprit, but not very many people make the connection.

          For cancer though the diet is called ketogenic and you use turmeric paste along with a few other natural cancer killers that dogs and cats can have and even the most aggressive cancers will die as theirs no carbs to feed on, no sugars and the cancer thrives on sugar.

          I’m currently trying to help my mums sister with a lump they found on her lung, she smokes heavily so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was lung cancer, thankfully the cancer series has given me the tools I need to cure cancer naturally, without the need for chemo so I will tell her what to eat, what not to eat, which herbs, spices and veggies she must eat everyday and hopefully the lump will go down in size and it’ll disappear before anything needs to be done about it. I mean if she has cancer she’s got nothing to loose, why not try what I’ve learnt and if it works, I can recommend everyone try it and hope it works for them also.

        • When our lab mix was diagnosed with cancer i home cooked his meals (he couldn’t tolerate raw either) I researched the food he could have and tried to get the percentage of fat/protein and carbs right. He had low GI carbs with veggies and meat. through the diet and testing his blood every day and insulin twice a day he managed to live a normal life for 8 more years. He also had a immune blood disorder (low platelet level) so was on life long meds for that also, he passed at the age of 14 in 2015 of Lymphoma, The cancer was one thing he could not beat.
          I wish your Mum’s Sister well and hope the lump does go down!
          More news on the Lola poop front LOL, her poop was extremely hard and bulky this morning, so the oats are doing their thing, She also had 2 frontier balls last night with dinner along with her prime roll. I will keep giving the frontier balls to add to her food, however not as a main meal as she will not that much of it. So i may just look for another kibble for her breakfast, Meals for mutts coming out with pea free sounds interesting, However it does still have the lentils as the 3rd ingredient which may upset her tummy.
          I have a Question maybe you can answer, Is fishmeal in kibble going to be the same as dried fish treats or the seafood in supplements? (like the stuff in the joint supplements)
          Because those are the 2 things i know upset her tummy but honestly have not tried anything with fishmeal in it.
          The earthborn looks good but has white fishmeal further down on the ingredient list
          “Earthborn Holistic Adult Vantage”
          has no peas or lentils or chickpeas. (i know it’s not grain free)

        • If there’s no health concerns then grain free doesn’t equate better, in most cases it’s still high carb, high starch, your simply changing from one carb to another. A vet said and I read a comment once that someone said they changed to grain free because it was carb free and I know where this myth came from, a certain brand is saying in a video that grain free is carb free and likely had that video on tv as well, really really bad myth on their part. If your having trouble getting people to feed your kibble then maybe make it better and less usual add something unusual to it heh.

          Anyways on the fish, it’s going to be ground up fish that’s had it’s water removed to create a meal, with 300% more protein then regular fish and with the water removed you know it’s a higher content of fish as fish is probably also around 70% water like chicken.

          Meals are better then foods that list solely chicken or fish or beef, duck, turkey and so on.

          Because fish treats are generally whole fish or slices of fish dried, no it won’t be the same, it’ll be a powder. But as an extra note from thinking about how it’s made it will be a little different.

          If you can get credit or money back you could try it, you never know. Dogs can be funny, they can react to beef or chicken in dry food but they can eat raw chicken and beef.

          We’re only just learning how to treat cancer in humans and pets as a frontline before we decide on chemicals, so up until now treating cancer required a big load of research and there was a lot of myths to get past, hopefully with all the new research and findings we will be able to finally stop cancer in its tracks. Well I’m hoping for a future like that anyways.

        • I know pet barn have their “Super Premium Food Promise” where they will give you a full refund if your pet does not like the food, However they do not stock earthborn, only other ok brands are nutro/Wellness/ivory coat/holistic select.
          So i can try and find a food out of those brands.. but might be hard.
          She might be ok with fishmeal, as i do remember a while ago we went fishing and caught some fish and i did give her a little steamed fish and she was ok with it, But i know tuna/salmon gives her the runs.
          She does fine on the usual grains so can be grain free or with grains (grain free usually has more legumes though which can be bad for her)
          Once i find that perfect kibble i will throw a party LOL.
          Grain free equals carb free? that’s totally wrong! crazy stupid there.

        • I think they should have sued them for lying to be honest, maybe they did because I haven’t heard it since but yeah, never lie like that I mean someone’s pet could be in serious trouble because of that.

          Lol super premium guarantee, I actually looked up what they considered to be ultra premium and I facepalmed almost th3 entire list, those foods were not premium not one bit.

          As long as the food mentions what fish are used she should be okay, the ones that simply state fish could be a mixture of ones she can’t have.

          Well I know that Susan has had luck with giving food back to Pet Circle but I think the problem with any of them is you have to send the food back and it’s not free.

          I hope you find a food, I guess you’ll just have to trial and error, no other way to go about it, not in Australia anyways, with how many different formulas USA has you’d be able to find something pretty easily.

        • I know right, America just has sooooo many to chose from!
          I just read on facebook group “the balanced canine Sydney” That a few kibble companies were contacted and ask how much protein in the food was derived from meat. the 3 companies that will not provide that information are ivory coat,Nutro and Eagle Pack. I’m surprised ivory coat wouldn’t answer that Question. Stay Loyal,Taste of the Wild,Kirklands,Vetlogica,SavourLife,Applaws,xp3020 and Artemis all answered.

        • Well we know why Nutro wouldn’t because Mars would prefer you didn’t know anything about their foods, but Ivory not telling that’s kinda sad, never expected that. Eagle pack I know of the kibble but I don’t really know the company like at all, so no idea if they’d be a willing company or not, but of course they didn’t so I guess their not.

          The rest are interesting do you have the link or a picture showing how much meat? that would be nice to see.

        • Ivory will not tell you anything anymore. They are no longer that family owned business that everyone loved. They have been bought out by Real Pet Food Co. which seem to be collecting as many brands as possible now days. RPF Co. also owns VIP Pet Foods, so those bright red meats you see in the supermarket and their Natures Goodness, along with Nature’s Gift, Fussy Cat, Farmer’s Market. They’ve recently acquired Billy & Margot too. So what they have is a mix between good and complete shit. We’ll see where they’re headed but RPF Co. was responsible for the venison biscuit being discontinued and I’m pretty sure the formula’s are changing.

          When you look at the back of the bag of their most popular flavour Lamb & Kangaroo, you’ll see that peas will make up the majority if the protein. The first two ingredients are whole meats with hight water content, then you have peas, then you have the meat meals, then peas again. Ivory Coat is becoming great at learning how to split ingredients.

        • The venison must be having shortage issues regardless because the price went sky high, the 1kg Ziwi I buy was $60 now it’s $90 that’s crazy!

          The cans I don’t know as I haven’t checked, I’ve still got to pay off my credit card a bit before I can buy anything new, so I’m using Frontier to get by and a can every 2 weeks or so haha, there really is no problem with food though as long as Rusty gets the powder mix and I’ve got a lot of kibble left and then mums homemade so there’s no need to go spending $165 right now, which is sadly how much even small dogs can cost.

          But the food does last a really long time. Around 6 months sometimes longer, so for 6 months $165 is actually small, but we tend to buy other things and pay off slowly and then things bulk up and suddenly your almost at your maximum credit lol.

          That’s too bad, they got a taste for the big bucks and got swallowed by them, I had a feeling this would happen because it’s not the first time a supposed family business has given up the family part for money. Wish they would just stop BS’ing us though and be truthful, but we know that’s not how it’s going to go down.

        • Yeah the price of Ziwi Venison is ridiculous now. I know the rep said they were having a hard time sourcing human grade venison so that is what has caused the price to increase. I’ve made the switch to their tripe formula cause the tripe does amazing things for the gut. I know what you mean by the cost though. A big bag of food is lucky to last my dogs two months or so and I spend anywhere between $170 – $200 depending on what food I’m switching between, not to mention the raw meat and bones as well. My dogs are better for it which is great but my credit card doesn’t love me as much haha

        • Yeah tripes really good but the dried variety would be too greasy for me, the dogs added weight from the mackerel and lamb one so geez I could imagine. I do however buy the canned version and that’s okay.

          Well the dogs food was one thing that pushed my card as I had to buy several things from Pet Warehouse on like 3 seperate occasions all in like a months time, but the brunt of it was an online game lol. I figured I loved the skins enough that I should just buy them all because I could and it was also in a moment where I was grieving again and I tend to impulse buy when that happens as it makes me happy. Probably not the best way to deal with it, but heck I’ve seen worse.

          Despite the price I will have to buy a bag next time because Angel loves it and that gives her more variety since she chooses what food she eats everyday and sometimes all she wants is Ziwi so I need to have it.

        • They revealed what Tate of the Wild said about % of actual meat

          “HOW DID TASTE OF THE WILD GO?

          We asked Taste of the Wild “From the Protein DM %, what percent is derived from actual meat and not fats, digest, gravies etc. i.e. Bison, Lamb Meal, Chicken Meal”. Their response was that 80+% of their protein is.

          There are 2 formula’s we particularly like, they happen to be Grain-free and they are:

          – High Prairie Canine® Formula with Bison & Roasted Venison
          – Wetlands Canine® Formula with Wild Fowl

          What we like about these 2 formula’s is they are both above 30% protein, they are both under 28% Carbs, actual meat is the first 3 ingredients with Sweet Potatoes and Peas following in 4th and 5th position”

          I was actually looking at their lamb formula to try Lola on, I might wait until they reveal what the other companies had to say.
          If you want to follow the balanced canine Sydney on their facebook page they will update with what other companies had to say.

        • Yeah I followed and liked them yesterday, because they had some very interesting reads. Susan has had success with the lamb only formula Sierra Mountain I think? the last bag Patch was sick though, so not sure if it’s a batch issue or something else.

          If a dog as sick as Patch did well on it, might be worth trying it even if peas are an issue.

        • Was also looking at the Holistic Select Lamb And Rice but cannot find smaller bags anywhere.. no way I’m buying a 13KG bag of it LOL

        • Ah that brand I had to go look it up, owned by Merrick who got brought out by Purina in 2014 or something like that lol. I think to a degree Purina still isn’t as bad as Mars, I do like that we’re getting more choice here, we really don’t have that much. It’s too bad Orijen and Evo didn’t work out, they irradiated the foods and cats died for Orijen as for the dogs no idea and Evo wasn’t selling well from memory so they removed it.

        • OK so i think this one might be a winner
          “meals for mutts lite turkey and lamb” Mypetwarehouse has the new design bags which means they will most likely be the new pea free formula (i will have to double check before buying)
          Our local stefmar also sells meals for mutts.
          I’m more inclined to buy meals for mutts then i am TOTW. So does this look like a good kibble?

        • I personally like Meals for Mutts, you can tell it’s highly digestible and an overall good food, what you need to take into consideration with lite formulas is they usually have a lot of fibre. I remember I tried the Earthborn weight for like 6 days the fibre was 11% and on the 6th day Rusty was at the vets office. I had at first figured it was the taurine or L-carnitine or tapioca, but it was none of those it was the fibre. I found that out after he also got triggered by the Applaws who has 7%. So I decided it best to keep the fibre under 4% and no problems thus far.

          I don’t remember how much fibre that formula had but it’s something to keep in mind, you can try it and if it doesn’t work you can at least say it was probably the fibre that caused it.

          I like most of the Meals formulas the CN vital range is also good with its coconut oil, but because it’s low in protein it’s not the best option for a healthy dog. But your pups get a variety so I don’t see that being a problem, it is however a healthy alternative to Royal Canin vet diets so the price reflects that.
          But Susan did some maths and actually told me that it’s still cheaper then the vet diets. Because we have to remember it’s 20kg while the vet diets are only around 13kg or less.

          I think your better off with M4M because ToTW really didn’t rank that great for toxins and because like Susan said there’s been a lot of sick dogs lately.

        • your right i never though about fibre, and for some reason i always thought meals for mutts was all grain free I did not know they had grain inclusive formulas that’s why i never looked into the brand. Silly me LOL
          The lite turkey and lamb has 8% fibre and 9% fat 21% protein.
          However they do have another formula which is slightly lower in fibre
          the “Kangaroo & Lamb” one has 6% fibre and only 11% fat.
          The royal canin only has 2% fibre.. so i’m hoping to transition to meals for mutts can work out and not give her the runs.
          i did look at the CN vital Turkey and like you said it is very much low protein with higher fat (16%) and 4% fibre.
          I’m a little unsure of the vital as it does not meet the minimum requirements for protein. Ugh difficult choice!
          Do i go with the lite lamb and turkey, the Kangaroo and lamb or the vital turkey?
          If Lola can tolerate the prime 100 kangaroo roll does that mean she should be able to tolerate kangaroo kibble? Sorry if that’s a silly Question LOL

        • Well I don’t see why not, since earlier on you mentioned something about fibre I’d go with the lower fibre one just to be safe, I’ve actually had the kangaroo Applaws for Angel and then the kangaroo treats and she did okay on both.

          That’s the one issue I have with the clinical range the fat, which is why I don’t give too much, Rusty never had an attack he just gained even more weight, I’d rather he stay at the 5.4kg which for a chihuahua is a lot but no matter what food we’ve tried he’s just kind of stuck at that weight lol.

          I also can’t just stop giving him my side of foods as he requires a lot of different things for his heart health, I’ve been doing some research into Hawthorn and what’s safe and what’s not, if I can find the berries tea I might start there seems to be the safest option.
          I read on one website if a too bigger dose is given of the homeopathic variety it can kill your dog, so that’s got me scared to try anything else then the berries.
          I wish they went into more detail of the dosage 3c or 12c is the dried herb dosage, if they would had stated grams or milligrams that would have been better.

          Such a big increase in fibre will have the same effects in dogs as in humans, so your better off with the 6%, but be aware that you may get an increase in stools, because the other foods you feed are all very low fibre, I think the Frontier was like less then 1%? either way take it slow and tell us how it goes. It’s a very well tolerated food, aside from Susan I haven’t seen any bad reviews about it, Patch got acid reflux from it I think.

        • OK so i think i may need to give her the kangaroo and lamb formula with the peas (the old formula) as i cannot get my hands on the new formula. I cant wait either as i need some of the royal canin left so i can slowly transition her over. hmmm what to do LOL.

        • A week or longer sometimes it can take longer because it’s quiet a change from Royal.

          The tripe treats as I’ve noticed are quiet a far cry from the tinned stuff, so I wouldn’t expect much haha, I actually had to throw mine away as the dogs were bleeding chewing it because it’s like a freaking rock.

          Good luck.

        • Well we’re not sure she’s going to like it or be okay on it, this is the best mindset to have for new foods, I’d buy if it’s at all doable the Royal and the M4M together. So in case you have to return a bag you’ll still have the kibble she eats.

        • She still has roughly 1.5kg of royal left.. so enough for mixing and enough for if she refuses the M4M. I’m confident she will eat it as she does get fairly hungry and likes the crunch of kibble, it’s just weather or not it’s going to agree with her.. hopefully it does.
          If it doesn’t then it’s back to the drawing board.

        • Well let’s hope she does fantastic on it.

        • She’s not use to food smelling so much LOL because it’s roo it’s smelly, so what does she do? she rolled on a few biscuits before eating them LOL
          The tripe treats are a big hit! dogs love them.

        • I’d try the biscuits again without the tripe, I’ve noticed that a few dogs tend to puke up treats especially if they have issues with the stomach, I forget but did she have stomach issues? If you say no she may have it regardless, the Royal being so full of wheat and rice sits nicely on the stomach, while other kibbles can kinda turn the stomach not literally haha and then the dog gets sick and pukes everything back up.

          So try it again, nothing but the Royal and the M4M and let’s see how that goes.

        • Yes i will skip the tripe for a while and just focus on the biscuits mixed with the royal.
          Yes she has a sensitive stomach usually diarrhoea but no vomiting.
          She has a history of colitis, and spent 8 months off and on tablets for that.
          That all stopped once i introduced her to the prime 100.
          If indeed these biscuits do prove too much for her to handle then she may need to stick to some sort of bland chicken kibble (if that even exists)
          I know in America allot of people swear by pro plan and say their dogs thrive on it, But i think that’s just a lesser corn version of royal.

        • I guess it depends on the dog, we may not like feeding the supermarket brands or other crappy brands but sometimes our dogs do best on those foods and whether we like it or not, that’s what we end up feeding.

          Susan eventually got to the point of trying all the supermarket foods in an effort to find something Patch doesn’t throw up, I don’t think any of them were good because they usually contain peas and tapioca.

          Some of the ProPlan formulas use oats and barley and wheat, that’s not bad, if this food doesn’t work you could try her on it. Seems like a pretty suitable food for tummy troubled dogs.

          The best is to simply variety the food every time you use a bag buy a bag of the other kibble she can eat and although that’s not necessarily how variety it works it’s better then having her on the same thing day in and day out for her entire life. We’re always told to eat variety and somehow that same train of thought cannot be seen in most households for their pets. Some eat the same kibble for 20 years, no treats or anything, that’s kinda sad though.

          Maybe those new Earthborn formulas will arrive soon and you can test that out also.

        • Yes I’m looking forward to the new earth born ones.
          I always try and give Lola something different, she has the prime 100 rolls for dinner but every fortnight i give her a different flavour, this week is Kangaroo and pumpkin, the fortnight before was chicken and rice and then turkey flaxseed. Some nights she has oats other nights carrots and a Brussel sprout with the roll.
          The weird thing is, a couple weeks back i got a sample of Billy and Margot chicken and lamb grain free it was a fairly large sample and she actually managed to eat it (mixed with the royal) for a week without issues. But it’s full of peas and chickpeas. and i do not know if i trust the brand at all. do you know anything about them? I also saw that they were one of them companies along with ivory coat that would not reveal their meat protein %. which is disappointing.

        • No I don’t know anything about them, I usually look up some stuff about new foods but not always, if I’m not going to try the food I usually don’t research it beyond what’s on their website.

          So she gets a wide variety so that’s okay, you can feed any kibble that works, but it’s still good if she had another kibble because you know it might be a toxin buildup always feeding the same kibble.

          I think someone said they got brought out by someone recently, never looked into it, may of been someone on the balanced canine Facebook, I even wrote on it saying I wouldn’t be surprised because money seems to be buying everyone these days.

        • OK so some good news, Been eating the meals for mutts for another couple of days now with zero vomiting and good stools. So the vomiting might of been from the tripe. She still likes the taste of the royal canin more (she picks that out and eats it first LOL) but is eating the meals for mutts with zero issue. I’m hoping she does fine on it, i would love to try her on a variety of different kibbles to see what works and what doesn’t so then i can rotate between different once every month or two. our other dog is crazy in love with the meals for mutts.

        • That’s good to hear Danielle. She likes the Royal Canin better because like children they’ll pick up McDonalds before a healthy meal. It’s great to hear they’re doing well on it too. Hopefully you can try different flavours and other top quality brands in the future.

        • Yes i absolutely intend on trying new brands, would love to give her a variety of kibble that she can tolerate. Now i know she can handle lamb and kangaroo that gives more some more choices.

        • That’s really good, I had a feeling it might be the tripe, some dogs just can’t handle it.
          The other pup loving it is really good as well.

          Well yeah the soy Canin haha will be preferred over real food every time, but maybe over time she’ll prefer the other kibbles you try. Just like with us eating healthier can usually be either tasteless and boring or too much of the wrong flavour and it will either grow on us or we will never like it.

          Finding other foods will be quiet the annoyance as most of every kibble here has peas, but we’re getting at least a few new kibbles a year, so maybe someone will create something without peas.

        • So far and so good still with the kibble, Both dogs eating the meals for mutts with no issues.. YAY.
          Been a hectic few days here and almost ended in disaster for my girl Lola,
          On Friday afternoon i decided to give her a bath and as usual she runs around like a loony afterwards and she rolled in dirt, so i shut the glass sliding door and left her out there while i got a towel to clean her off. Well she didn’t see the door was closed and ran head first 100 miles an hour straight into the door and hit that hard she cracked the glass (the thick safety glass) she started whimpering and was really shaking i was panicking and quickly took her over to the emergency vet. They said she seemed ok but to watch out for signs of head trauma which so far she’s been acting normally. we are having our usual vet check her over again tomorrow. I still cannot believe that happened and she could of easily killed herself. The door is being replaced today at a cost of $500.
          I know this is not food related but i hope it’s ok to post a pic of the damage.. the impact point of the shattered glass was here head.
          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e7fc8c66875b09039d0aac356559e1f5b432325d78395874b8a8c3f58a8470c6.jpg

        • The sad part of life is loosing those which you love most and been unable to do anything about it, thankfully Lola didn’t kill herself and I pray she has no lasting head or neck injuries, seems like she was really going super fast to be able to crack that type of glass in that way.

          We’ve posted stuff not food related so yeah it’s okay, because we don’t generally know each other we usually chat it up in the comments section, with Susan I’ve at least got her Facebook so I don’t need to spam the comments section when I was to talk about stuff with her.

          To the food that’s really good, like really really good, big step up nutrition wise and with the newer formulas containing coconut oil and turmeric now, Lola and her friend will be much healthier in the years to come, well obviously with the added variety not the same formula or food brand year in and year out but yeah it’s looking good.

        • Lola got the all clean today by the vet, checked neck/head/eyes and jaw and said she’s fine! I’m very relived.
          It’s great about the food, i have noticed her poops might be a little more greasy then before but still firm. The unfortunate part here is that MFM was one of the companies that would not disclose how much protein is meat in their kibbles. that’s very disappointing. apparently canidea and holistic select and wellness were also among those that would not tell. They are the most popular higher end foods. I’m wondering about Earthborn because that’s one i was considering to try. Holistic select was another i was going to try. It’s not to say they are not good foods, but still disappointing.

        • That’s great, I’m relieved she’s okay, she’s a very lucky pup.

          I’m not too sure what reason there’d be to not tell people that info, I don’t see anyone stealing the formula or anything like that as we all know how expensive meat is and it’s not like every company is suddenly going to add more meat to their foods, so you have to wonder what their reasoning behind it is.

          Regardless I do believe that a Earthborn is meat heavy at least the high % protein one would be, Holistic Select changed formulas recently and added molasses into their top ingredients but it’s the sugar beet pulp variety so it’s likely they added it for the fibre and gut benefit instead of as a flavour enhancer. Based on Susan though beet pulp artificially improves your dogs poop rather then naturally, I’d definitely be wary of it that high up, as in some dogs it could cause more problems then fix.

          I’d be wary of the weight control Earthborn it’s low in meat and the fibre is very high, after only 4 days Rusty had a severe pancreatic flare up, never again.
          With Meals for Mutts the change in him is pretty quick, when he eats it his tear stains go away the next day and his coat glistens even when he’s not standing in the light, it’s rather noticeable. So I can tell from that and he’s general well-being that the food is amazing.

          I’d be more worried about foods that lie about what they are and that are made from corn, wheat, soy and rice with not much extra nutrition, no fruits or veggies, no good oils, fish oil tends to be rancid and they tell you that the food will make your pet live longer and yeah I wonder how they will live longer eating meat meal that’s unidentifiable meat that could very well be dogs and cats. I don’t think it should be legal for them to state something about their food that isn’t true, sadly it is legal to a degree and they really do butcher that degree.

          Obviously if food was boring to look at and nothing interesting was said about it people wouldn’t really bother too much with it, they have to sell it somehow and what better way then fake marketing?

        • Well Balanced Canine just released the companies that said yes.. you should go check it out on facebook. Seem ivory coat had a change of heart and actually responded, as did earthborn. It’s a shame meals for mutts and canidea are not on that list though.
          I don’t have allot left out of the meals for mutts bag so i’ll do some more searching around for another kibble to try so i can get a collection of good ones to rotate between.
          I have also been adding 3 or 4 of those frontier chicken balls to her dinner and she has been eating that.. she just refuses to eat it as a full meal.
          I also have been home making their treats, i have a dehydrator so i have been making turkey and beef jerky and they love it and causes no tummy issues, it’s great that i can make my own because i only use the ultra lean meat (fat removed) and add nothing to it, so i know it’s better then store brought.

        • I’m on Facebook several times a day, so I saw it, looking forward to the results. I’m also reading some issues people are having with the new M4M formulas and wonder if it was really a change for the better.

          Dehydrator is the cheapest way to create treats, I’m still waiting for Aldi to advertise one, apparantly it’s just as good as any other. You’ve got $10 for a 200g bag of chicken jerky that’s from China, when you could buy a kilo of chicken breast for $9, it’s very very expensive and actually when I think about it so are the Supernaturals treats their like $15 for a pretty small bag, the same price as some kibble and half the price of better kibble. Of course it’s all about weight, adding the treats up to 2kg the price would be out of this world.

        • I’m looking forward to the results also, holding off on buying more food but it could be a while before they post the results.
          The reason i started dehydrating the treats is because of the China jerky issue, I just couldn’t trust anything that was sourced or made in China. That and the fast that most of those brought jerky treats gave Lola the runs. But yes it’s heaps cheaper to make your own (time consuming but cheaper LOL)
          With the earthborn i was thinking of trying the Adult Vantage one, I know it’s carb heavy but to be honest Lola does better with carbs. It does have fishmeal in it but no peas, It’s also low in fat.
          I just seen petstock have a new food called “GLOW” but with Sorghum, Tallow, Beet Pulp high on the list it’s not looking good.

        • WAG treats were always super shady about where their chicken and duck came from, I did buy from them a few times though because on their Facebook someone had asked and they replied Australia, after both dogs got sick I vouched never to feed the China ones ever again.
          They’ve got it rather well hidden to the unwary it doesn’t say China but PRC.
          I asked them about it one time but I never got a reply.

          Yeah the GLOW is pretty crappy and it’s not that cheap, definitely in it for the money.

          Looking at it now it is rather carb heavy, lots of non meat items up there, but it doesn’t make it bad, some dogs do indeed do better on carb laden foods.

        • Why is it when you find a good food the dogs now refuse to touch it?
          the girls are now refusing to go near the meals for mutts, Lola will get one biscuit roll it around in her mouth then spit it out. I cannot leave to bowl sitting out to free feed her as we have a toddler and another dog that will eat it.
          she’s not usually this fussy so she must really not like it. usually no such thing as a fussy beagle LOL most of the time they will eat themselves to death if you let them.

        • Well your the only one that knows it’s healthy, can’t tell your pet that as they won’t understand, but she was eating it so I wonder if maybe the flavour just got boring? that can happen with dogs who were on flavoured kibble beforehand. Everything appears well and then bam they stop eating it, lots and lots of reviews and comments like that, the trick is finding a kibble with enough flavour on it’s own that it keeps them interested long enough that they eat the whole bag.

          Seems like the new formula isn’t very much loved anyways dogs getting sick on it, it turning into glue when wet, makes you wonder if the change was really that good. They should of replaced the peas with another fibrous starch, I don’t know what the ingredients are right now, but I feel they removed the peas and didn’t add anything to take it’s place.

          I’ll definitely be keeping an eye with what may or may not happen to Axel on the new formula and if something goes wrong I’ll get her to buy Blackhawk or something while I mull over what else she could use. She’s got a baby now, so can’t go spending too much on the dog, but enough for him to at least eat healthy, anything is better then Optimum lol.

        • Just saw a pop up for a new food (for working dogs though) “Stockman & Paddock” i had never seen or heard of it before.
          The girls still refusing to eat the meals for mutts UGH!
          They will not touch it and have been like that for 4 days now. So looks like i may need to switch again. i did notice when i soaked a little for them hoping they would eat it (which they did not) It did not really go soft or swell like other kibble has. I think the main issue with Lola is she hates the texture, they are allot harder then the royal canin and she goes to crunch one then spits it out.
          I did buy her a new cooked roll type food yesterday which she seems to like, It’s the leaps and bounds brand and i did not see anything bad in the ingredient list. It’s chicken lentil and turmeric has veggies and flaxseed and fish oils with tapioca and a few other things added (not bad things.) So she can alternate between that and the prime 100 for dinner. I also saw PetBarn are selling bone broth for people that do not have time to make their own. I may make some next week.
          It’s funny i went looking online to research more of the new leaps and bounds roll i brought her but could not find it anywhere and the leaps and bounds website also does not exist apparently.

        • Someone who was dissatisfied with the new formula wrote that when adding water it turned into glue, I’m just not sure how I feel for the future of M4M. I have plenty of other kibbles the dogs did just great on and feel like I should stick to those and of course the M4M clinical variety, because that one didn’t have peas to start with.
          You could say I’m extra worried about my friends dog and whether he’ll be okay on the food or not.

          The clinical formula when either Rusty or Angel bites down it breaks very easy so it’s not hard in the least.

          Leaps and Bounds was actually a pretty good brand at a pretty good price all things considered, I’m pretty sure I even said if I was strapped for cash I’d use it, but certainly not on the dogs we have right now more of a future statement.

          My mum mentioned making bone broth for me thankfully she did as I can’t have it, have tried several times and was always sent to the bathroom or was coughing a lot, they say it produces quiet a lot of natural MSG and if your intolerant which I am these days you’ll have problems and I did, told her she was free to make it for Rusty if she wanted.

          It’s a brand owned by PetBarn so they did have a website, not sure why it was taken down though, you’d figure in this day and age where people want to read up on the foods bio and other things before buying any food that a website should always be available.

          Never heard of that one either, might have to look it up.

        • What’s your opinion on the Vetalogica Naturals Grain Free food? I know it has peas, But I’m struggling to find something with a good amount of protein that’s also not high in fat. if i cannot find anything else then i may go taste of the wild. Again I’m not sure LOL I hate wasting money in kibble that either they cannot eat or does not agree with them.
          Lola did have another dried tripe treat today, no vomiting. i brought her a tin of the tripe so will try that in the next couple of days to use as a topper or just a little side dish.

        • I went and looked it up again and I think Balanced said it was high meat? so maybe give it a go, but I don’t know if your pets will like it so if you want to take that chance it’s up to you.
          Taste of the Wild I’ve always liked, I think they make good kibble, just because I don’t actively buy it doesn’t mean it isn’t good.

        • Yes i used the balanced canin data sheet to sort through some kibble and the Vetalogica was tier 1 and included min 50% meat protein. it has 34% total protein. The taste of the wild lam formula has 25% total protein 80% of which is from meat. The taste of the wild is slightly higher in fibre and fat. (not by much.)
          I would definitely not purchase the bison formula as i know Lola did not like it when i brought it 2 years ago.

        • How do you the math equation for that, I did 80×36 and I had 2880 so the 28 at the start but it’s doubtful that that’s how your meant to do it.

        • Just going by the balanced canine data sheet. Vetlogica has 34% total protein at least half of that is from meat. I think i wrote it wrong the first time LOL.
          Totw lamb has 25% protein at least 80% of that is from meat.

        • Ah I was hoping that there was an actual equation to how to get that amount, so I could use it to show people the percentage, I feel like the math I did may be okay, I mean I got a 12% on the 30% protein so I have no clue but it looks like it could be true.

        • Balanced canine had their data available in one of their posts, i don’t know if you have it.. but i actually saved it for future reference. You may need a app to read it though.
          I think it would be 0.8× 30 (if it was 30% total protein with 80% of it meat.) So 24%
          I think LOL

        • I asked her, I’ll go check if I got a reply but may need to wait for tomorrow.

        • Edanna, I have a packet of the Salmon and Sardine Gluten Free in front of me so I can give you a list of the ingredients
          Salmon and Sardine, seasonal vegetables (bok choy, zucchini, broccoli) ground brown rice, alfalfa, natural fats and oils, omega 3, 6 & 9, coconut oil, kelp, turmeric, parsley, probiotics and then it starts to go into the vitamins and minerals.

          I haven’t had any issues with feeding the new formula but then again my dogs have been eating this along with Ziwi and Balanced Life for awhile now so maybe they’re just use to it. I rotate through the flavours but I never buy a 20kg bag of the fish flavours cause I know my dogs get bored of that one.

          I’d say that Dannielle’s dogs are becoming bored from the flavour considering they were eating Royal Canin which is like Maccas.

          @disqus_xkh4xALd08:disqus Have you tried meal feeding for 20 minutes and then taking it away? Doing this trains your dogs to eat meals and eat meals quickly as they won’t be offered food until their next meal. It’s much better health wise then letting them graze and it stops them from becoming fussy. Think of it this way, you’re their mum and you’ve just killed and made them a nice meal in the wild where they might not be able to eat everyday so they should be thankful and eat every last morsel. Every dog is different of course, I have one pup who will eat anything and another who has gone three days without eating before because she was being stubborn and didn’t like it when I first made the switch from Royal Canin to something better. Also how is your pup? I just saw that photo and my god she must have a sturdy head. I hope she’s ok.

          Hope I didn’t come off as demanding or anything. I have read this post like 6 times and I think it may still sound pushy… that is not my intention of course, I just want to help

        • Thanks for that, it also didn’t sound pushy to me, sometimes it sounds like that and then you read it several weeks later and you wonder why you thought that.

          Yeah only a few people had problems with it probably not very widespread, I still believe their a good brand, but their customer service and their reluctance to answer the meat question was saddening and perhaps I just don’t think so highly of them as I once did. But as long as Axel does well on it I’ll have the friend go through about 5 bags of different flavours before rotating to another brand.

          I think some dogs are just like cats and children, why eat healthy when unhealthy tastes better? you eventually get used to healthy the flavour does grow on you, but it can take years for some of us. I liked tahini after a week of eating 2 tbs per day though and eventually got myself onto the unhulled one for better nutrients. Too bad I can no longer eat peanut butter, every time I do my stomach hurts bad.

        • (Keep an eye out for any stirfry beef/pork/chicken/veal on special too, it’s already cut to size and ready to roll)

        • (Temporary diversion) Edanna could you get a message to Susan that Savour Life are due to begin another round of rescue donations? I think she’s pals with someone at Golden Oldies and they wanted a slice of the cake but don’t currently receive one. Pretty sure the nominations need to be via facebook comments on their page though.

        • Alright I copy and pasted your response to her, she was just on, but since she only uses a computer not handheld she may or may not currently be at the computer.

        • ignore this post LOL

        • I hope so!
          I will let you know in the next week 🙂
          The food will be delivered tomorrow. petshopdirect have super quick dispatch times and good prices, it on par with petcircle.

        • Not yet “Balanced canine Sydney” haven’t posted the exact data yet as they are trying to give other companies more time to respond.
          Canidae,eartborn,wellness,nurtagold and holistic select have not responded as of yet. But i cant believe ivory coat said they will not tell you how much meat.. that is very sad.

    • I wonder why they list it as “maize” on the ingredients if they’re so proud of using corn.

      • Made me look. This is the ingredient panel from their Medium Adult formula in the US. Perhaps they avoid the word Maize there for political reasons? Regardless, wow what a stellar list of ingredients! A person could be forgiven for thinking this was some sort of food product intended for poultry or hamsters.
        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1755b960247a3d8ab28b47793523e4afe1bf028b18f86a92c33097d0ec02e4fa.jpg

        • Their marketing is genius if they can get people to buy their foods with ingredient lists like those, like how can anyone read that and think quality? there’s no meat, the vitamins are the worst ones, the ones that dogs and even humans bodies barely use 5% of that’s why the doses are so high, unlike chelated ones.

          I guess the one rewarding factor is there’s no corn as in maize not the gluten part or soy but still a vegetarian food in disguise for those that don’t understand pet food ingredient lists and who think that a food that sounds like a bread recipe is something dogs should eat.
          I’ve actually seen that on YouTube, a recipe for dog biscuits but it’s clearly a bread recipe.
          A very expensive one at that.

      • To be completely fair to the evil soulless nice people at RC, that pic most likely passed through umpteen hands before crossing my desk. It might have originated in the US. Which seems reasonable considering the US fondness for advertising that doesn’t just stretch boundaries, but leaves reality far, far behind.

    • Bleh the usual of why am I not surprised? some will fall for it most won’t, more people are learning daily and of course some don’t care at all and are putting their dogs health in jeopardy for no reason at all.

      Incredible in every way, more like the only part it’s incredible in is selling rice for $174 lol, their totally managing to get away with that.
      I consider them as dense as concrete, but they consider the same of us, hoping we will fall for their “marketing tactics”.

      No way in hell with my knowledge now, even if I was forced, I’d do what I do best and research another way.

      • With corn being apparently such a fantastic food for canines, I do hope the poor corn farmers in the US are not spending too much time shooing coyotes and wolves away from the crop :p

        • Lol that’s so true and yet the crops aren’t being eaten by them so you have to wonder right? they know though trust me that they do they just don’t care because it’s cheap and it allows for them to make an enormous profit.

          Nothing in any of the foods is worth the price you pay for them, too bad the court case for this was dismissed and their happy to continue to over price and call us fools for even trying to stop them, they laugh all the way to bank simultaneously rolling on the floor in the laughter as well.

  7. Have you looked at their “Endurance 4800” formula?
    I was really impressed with the 32% protein and 30% fat listed, plus maize and wheat aren’t on the ingredients list, which made it stand out from their other dry food varieties for me.
    Half tempted to try it but at the same time I’ve only seen it sold in 20kg bags so I’m not sure if I want to commit to almost my dog’s weight (very very small greyhound) in food if it doesn’t work out to be very good.

  8. So while on pet circle I decided to check out a few of Royals formulas and just as I thought! The ingredients are virtually the same across all the formulas I visited, some are simply in different locations on the list and a few have extra ingredients, but it doesn’t change the fact that the list is exactly the same.
    A guy on dog food advisor once showed a comparison chart for another food and it was exactly the same trickery as this one.

    • The stand out food I’ve seen Royal Canin make is the Endurance 4800 (I can’t believe I’ve only just realised it existed after knowing most varieties for so long; I’m a tad obsessed with dog food haha) otherwise their varieties do look very similar from what I’ve seen over the years.
      I’m really tempted to try it but I’m always so hesitant about veering from what I already know to be really good in theory and in practice :/

      • I personally wouldn’t use it don’t like their ingredients, don’t like that they also make Pedigree which is much worse ingredient wise in America and quiet frankly for the price you can get a 5 star food without corn and wheat and with more healthy oils and better meat proteins.

        • That’s what I was thinking in terms of ingredients quality (I’m normally not a fan of RC’s .

          As for the fat content and feeding guide its like that because athletic dogs need an insane amount of energy; for example racing bred greyhounds utilise up to 50% of their calories from fat (I wouldn’t feed a normal dog, food containing this much fat otherwise!).

          Thank you so much for your input I think I’ll just stick with my raw/Ivory Coat combo then 🙂

        • I wanted to add that I thought the amount you needed was too much because looking at other foods listed for working dogs the amounts are quiet a lot lower in grams per day, I feel that for the amount of fat in the food that 600g is way too much and that it likely means that it’s very hard to digest.
          Looking at Eukanuba I’m using 20-25kg as a base based on a friends dog, anyways they have 305g listed for their endurance formula, Coprice is eww but the listing was not more then 400g, so something with Royal just isn’t adding up.

          The reason I say digest is because raw foods always have a much smaller grams per day then dried food and I remember that it was mentioned it’s like that because of its digestibility.
          Frontier Pets is the smallest amount I’ve ever found for grams per day, 25kg was only 2 cups, K9 Natural has anywhere from 4 to 7 cups legit so obviously it’s not that great.
          Might be worth trying for you? It’s definitely very nutrient dense, Rusty was a new man after only 2 servings, foods that help in that short amount of time are foods I will feed forever and ever haha.

          Also fat wise no other foods I’ve looked at contain 30% so like I said I don’t think it’s necessary to go that high, 20% is good also and you feed less based on the charts I looked at and I feel that’s more of a win, Royal loves being expensive there’s a website out there somewhere that asked Royal some questions and they were very proud of being so expensive, when you read something like that you realise all they care about is money.

          I feel from other standpoints and to the digestibility of raw, freeze dried or dried foods that you’d be better off sticking to foods like that because it’ll be easier on your pup and he’ll perform better and should be much cheaper.

        • To be honest I’ve never really gone by the recommended serving just calories and protein per cup.

          That’s insane! I didn’t realise RC actually stated it was proud of being expensive (I’ve never been overly keen on their other products for my dogs which is why I’ve never really bothered to keep up with RC gossip haha).

          I don’t think I could bring myself to feed Coprice (as you said “eww”!).

        • Coprice at the end of the day is virtually the same as any of the supermarket foods, people can do much better it’s just most don’t realise how many foods are actually out there either that or they don’t care, to some food is food, to me I can tell you it’s not personal experience and all that.

          It wasn’t a matter of RC gossip but rather a part of my journey into dog food research currently 6 years and on going, there’s still a few things left for me to learn, disease wise.

          I checked a few other foods just now and same thing all over, RC uses the highest amount per day out of any of them, checked even overseas brands like Redpaw.

  9. Hi, I feed Royal Canin to my dogs as this was recommended to me by my sister (who is a vet and also feeds this to her dogs), because they are one of the few brands that actually does studies on their food to show that it will do what it says (eg dogs will lose weight on their weight loss formula, have fewer skin problems on their skin support formula etc). Just wondering what your qualifications are in canine nutrition (since you seem to poo poo vets so much) and also if you can provide any studies stating that dogs can’t digest corn, as I’ve never heard this from a vet before. Thanks

    • Not all vets are trained up in nutrition. I work at a pet store and everyone that had an vets opinion, each opinion was entirely different. I worked for 3 different vets and they all preferred different brands.
      Talk to a vet who specializes in nutrition. Dogs don’t naturally go to corn fields and eat corn. They go after prey. They don’t have the same intestinal tract as herbivores or omnivores to break down grains. They don’t naturally need carbohydrates. They need high protein, high fat. Do your research!

      • Unlike the reply below I agree, I don’t necessarily feel that grain free is the better option because it still contains a lot of carbs that can still turn into sugar that still feed cancer and cause diabetes, however it’s better then corn, soy or wheat that’s for sure.

        I also don’t feel we need PHD’s in nutrition to know how to feed our animals, as the person below clearly wrote, were not retards if we can feed ourselves we can surely feed our pets.

        There’s more then enough online research to learn everything one needs to know about how to properly feed pets, if for any reason common sense is blown out of the water, I personally wouldn’t go by anything a company says about how their food is the best food and I certainly wouldn’t believe them when their dissing my friends, although it’s true I don’t know any of these people in real life, I don’t think that they’d be capable let’s say of doing such things.

        I feel everyone is just here to help people make better decisions on what to feed their pets, at least that’s why I’m here.

      • Hey Candace,

        Funnily enough, I now also work at a pet store and so have done my research. For example, I am aware that not all vets have training in nutrition. Were you aware that the guy who runs this site also has no formal training in animal nutrition and can provide no actual scientific studies that back up any of his claims? Or that he does not disclose that he is paid by certain companies to promote their foods? (Something I recently learned when chatting about this site with the rep from another big name super premium food company, who mentioned that they had been approached by this site and offered the same deal but they turned him down. Funnily enough, every product by that brand has the same rating on this website.)

        I also recently completed training with a large company who specialises in grain free who admitted in their training that dogs don’t need to go grain free as they can absolutely digest grains, nor is it better (and yes dogs do need carbohydrates as they are an important source of energy in most species and completely cutting them out would harm the animal. Most grain free foods still have carbs in other forms, such as potato. Learn some basic biology!). They recognised that an important reason many people would choose to go grain free is to get a higher quality protein source. If that works for you, great. Personally, grain free food did nothing to fix my dog’s skin condition, but he did get fatter and end up on less than half the daily amount of food he was on before (a massive pain when you train intensively and use your food to reward).

        And just as an interesting side note, I used to own a dog that did in fact go an graze on grass like a goat, not because she had an upset tummy, simply because she liked the grass. She would also eat all the vegetables in the veggie patch if you didn’t catch her in time. So yeah, dogs do seek out non-meat nutritional sources. Enjoy your grain-free fad train, I am still happy to feed Royal Canin to my dogs 🙂

        • Agreed, a lot of vets don’t have nutrition training, they literally have companies such as Hills and Royal Canin throwing their merchandise at them when they’re students to try and win them over. I think I know the company you are talking about and I have had my own encounter with plenty of reps. It doesn’t take 5 minutes of research to realise what they’re sprouting is complete and utter bullshit. A rep is paid quite a lot of money to get clients to order their products from them, they wouldn’t tell you their food is crap cause then the owner of the business wouldn’t buy it and they would lose out on their sweet sweet commission.

          I actually like to research food and question reps about it, you’d be surprised how many know jack shit about nutrition and the pet industry! I have met many a reps that don’t even like pets. They get their jobs not because they like Fido over there but because they can sprout lies as well as any lawyer to get you to buy their shitty products in bulk.

          One of biggest problems I have with Royal Canin is they prescription diets more than anything else. They promote that they’ve done their research when in fact it is padded full of chemicals to get results they want. Take their urinary diets; to stop crystals from forming the urine needs to be quite acidic, what causes this is good quality red meats which honesty aren’t found often in Royal Canin diets. What is found a lot is corn(sorry maize), wheat, sorghum etc. Which ingredients like this actually cause the urine to go more alkaline which in turn makes the crystals worse! Why buy from a company that clearly is profit first and your pets health later?

        • With the Royal part not only that, but crystals depending on which ones they are hate water, it essentially melts them haha, so with a little common sense on how crystals actually work, you can theorise that adding moisture to the diet and feeding raw or canned foods if preferred is the best way to dissolve them and keep them away for good.
          Sadly it’s not common sense because people usually don’t do that and instead chronically continue to dehydrate their pets and also in feeding the prescription food for longer periods of time when they try to change foods the pet gets really bad and sometimes rarely they die.

          If the correct food had been fed immediately, they would have control of the issue, instead of putting a bandaid on it, eventually that bandaid will fall off and that’s where things get truly expensive and not necessary and yeah dangerous.

          Same goes with diabetes and cancer, wrong diets are given and they make the conditions worse.

        • Pet Food Reviews February 8, 2018 at 3:33 pm

          Hi CC259,

          It sounds to me the rep you spoke to is disgruntled with our reviews? We have never been paid by any manufacturers.

          The purpose of Pet Food Reviews is to help others, whereas the purpose of the rep you spoke to is to make money – it’s their job. Do you realise you’ve taken their word, believed it, then accused me of being paid off, without any basis of fact… on my website… then accused me of writing reviews without a basis of fact?

          The reviews analyse ingredients and composition based on common facts, standards, experience, and what has been researched by institutions. Any points made within the reviews can be further researched to establish further proof. A year ago you said I “poo poo” vets by saying they receive little training on nutrition, then today you confirm it’s actually correct. You had a starting point, you researched it, and you learned the truth – that’s the whole point.

          By the way, all grain free foods have carbs in them. Quite a lot in fact.

        • Makes me wonder if there’s any point at all in taking a class in more advanced nutrition and homeopathy, because in reality I could be walking into a sort of trap, where even these courses are set up by Hills. If the courses weren’t so expensive I could give it a go regardless, but starting at $3500 maybe I should just stick to online research.

        • If I remember rightly you’re hoping to get into the animal nutrition business? It might be an idea to look into the minimum requirements to qualify for professional indemnity insurance in this field, which you’d almost certainly need if you’re providing advice in a climate where everybody has a lawyer on speed-dial. If the animal health industry is anything like others, the insurer may not accept any amount of DIY study (or instead offer you PI insurance at some ridiculous premium which you really don’t want, it’s crazy expensive at the best of times). Unfortunately to keep the insurer happy, you might wind up having to do some sort of recognised qualification no matter how dodgy some of the content may be 🙁

        • You make me want to resort to the simple life of just helping online as a random haha, because quiet frankly your right it’s a tough place to be, if anything ever happens your the first to be blamed and people love to threaten. I’m still thinking about it, but I’m starting to think it might just not be for me.

        • It’s not a dealbreaker, you still have alternative business models available (you might even be looking at one! :p). In this day and age it’s just tough to start out and go directly into dispensing professional advice without a hundred prearranged clients ready to go on day one. If you’re determined this is all just minor fluff, determined people always succeed.

    • Hi Caitlin,

      Firstly I don’t poo poo vets, far from it. But from a nutrition standpoint vets aren’t very well trained, with the training they do receive being directly influenced by companies such as Royal Canin, Hills, et al. Your sister should be able to confirm this.

      Prescription diets are tailored to specific conditions which need a certain composition or ingredient makeup. As an example, a hepatic dog should be fed a specially formulated hepatic formula, such as Royal Canin Hepatic. A vet may be trained thus – For condition “Hepatic”, recommend diet “Royal Canin Hepatic”. A step further would be an understanding of specific dietary requirements, such as “low copper”. From a nutritional standpoint, what’s overlooked here is the actual ingredients. Royal Canin hepatic is rice and corn. They list the first key benefit as “Vegetable Protein”, saying it’s easily digestible by dogs with liver conditions. What they neglect to mention is there are low copper meats which are more easily digestible by dogs with liver conditions, and much better for overall health. I’m not making any far flung statements here, it’s simple knowledge.

      You’ll find if you read the guidelines on many Royal Canin formulas they’re only recommended for temporary feeding, not long term. That’s another fact often overlooked. They’re formulated to reduce symptoms, not long term nutritional requirements.

      These companies undertake great deals of research which circulates around manufacturers. Not all of it is released, only if it’s beneficial to their cause.

      Dogs can digest corn. Studies show corn (if processed to a high standard) can be nearly as digestible as meat proteins, but the amino acid profile is still different.

      You can read about me here – https://www.petfoodreviews.com.au/about/

      • I agree. This is my situation right now with my cat. My Bengal cat 2 yrs of age can’t digest any dry food. We discovered it with trial and error when he started to throw up on a weekly basis at about 1 year of age. He throws up pieces of kibble mostly swelled up and undigested, and usually half to an hour after eating it. We have tried Canidae grain free, Ziwipeak( he can’t munch the flat slippery grain), Royal Canin hyperallergenic( he grew up on Royal canin for kitten formula up to 1 yr of age), Wellness Core grain free, Fussy Cat grain free, Optimum. All those listed were not suitable even after eating very little of the kibble! We have put him on wet food only, it has been two months and he is doing better already. At the moment he is on Fussy Cat VIP, with occasional cooked goat meat. He enjoys Fussy Cat chicken flavour the most. I am however still searching for a suitable dry food to supplement his wet diet as I know Fussy Cat isn’t premium food. it’s doing my head in!

        • Candace Vanderwee February 8, 2018 at 5:40 am

          Try feline natural cat dry. It’s freeze dried, they take the moisture out but leave all the nutrients intact. You can rehydrate it with water or give it dry. It’s a high meat diet of 99% meat protiens as cats need a higher protien intake then dogs. No fillers or grains or nasties. Petbarn has a palatability where if your cat or dog won’t eat it you can bring it back to store for full refund or exchange.

        • Thank you for your suggestion. My beloved Koishi passed away before Christmas Day. After numerous tests, Koishi had developed IBD which I think it contributed to him developing epilepsy.

  10. Really hate it when pet circle lists this and advance as super premium foods as it’s clearly a lie to get them to sell more of those foods to make more money, at the very least leave out the premium bs as the foods are very clearly not premium.

  11. I have two dogs… Maltese shihtzu x and a shihtzu poodle x. One is 7 the other 14. I was a bad parent and fed then supermarket dof food. I then moved to Royal Canin as my eldest dog was a little underweight. It did the trick and he’s put on 1kg but now I read that it sucks! Can someone please recommend a good dog food considering their ages? They both eat from the same bowls and I have tried splitting them but no good. My dogs are grazers. Food always in their bowls and they eat when they’re hungry. Would love some guidance here please.

    • Senior diets generally lack meat and meat proteins. Manufacturers want you to believe that’s alright given your senior dog is much less active than they used to be.

      It’s a fallacy. The opposite is true – older dogs need meat proteins even more so to retain muscle mass and overall health. The truth is meat is an expensive ingredient, so manufacturers don’t need to think twice before replacing it with something cheaper.

      • Ok… so I should try a grain free choice with high meat content?
        The guys at Pet Warehouse suggested that Royal Canin wasn’t that bad and that lots of people use it but also recommended Artemis and suggested to mix them…just to confuse me a little more!

        Can you recommend me having a go at a particular type? Blackhawk, Taste of the Wild, Applaws, Artemis?

        Appreciate the help!

        Dominick

        • Just because a lot of people use it doesn’t make it good, a lot of people eat at Mc Donald’s also, I personally will only eat their hotcakes these days as anything else makes me gravely ill.

          Do what pet food says and mix foods and your dogs will be much better for it, try not to stay on the same food longer than a few months, it’s better that way, if you can.

          They also likely suggested it as its a best seller on both warehouse and circle, but like I said that doesn’t make it good.

          Artemis is pricey I’ve noticed, I didn’t really see a need for the price to be that high, it’s virtually the same as most of the other natural foods.

        • Dominick Ruggiero September 2, 2016 at 4:30 pm

          Good advice. I like your logic. Thanks!

        • No probs 🙂

        • I mix foods all the time and recommend doing so. Variety is good, and it also means I can take advantage of which decent food’s on sale when I need to stock up.

          I tried not to recommend specific brands but any on the best rated list are a good choice, with most being grain free and decent meat content – https://www.petfoodreviews.com.au/dry-dog-food/best-dry-dog-food/

        • Since reading your reviews I now mix my food depending on sales. Canidae – blackhawk – Ivory Coat. Etc Thanks as I have learnt so much about quality of foods and what ingredients matter especially the word “Meal” behind meat products. I will no longer buy any pellets that do not have at least one “meal” in the first 4 ingredients.

        • Dominick Ruggiero September 2, 2016 at 4:02 pm

          Ok, nice one. Good advice. Thanks to everyone who chimed in with their opinions and advice.

          Appreciate it.

    • I don’t remember what it was that pit said about senior diets, but someone did say that they aren’t really necessary and others say they have some necessities which I don’t remember and it’s kind of annoying.

      Personally I have tried Ivory Coat and I love it but the kibble is large and that could put off a lot of people and dogs as some dislike big things in their mouths.

      Taste of the wild is small, has a big amount of flavours and some that are truly exotic, biggest problem is they’ve had recalls in the past a lot of them, but I wrote to them recently about something similar and they replied with a list of all the checks they do and I think it was pet food reviews that wrote that they totally stripped the plant and started anew, we don’t receive food from that plant though, the recalls were based on another plant, but that still sways people either way.

      Sunday Pets baked biscuit kibble, their these pretty big junks of well rectangle biscuit :p, although the ingredients are awesome, the food itself wasn’t very good it was full of hair and it didn’t smell right, someone on here also had problems with hair and dogs don’t digest hair like that so that was a cause for concern.

      Natures gift nourish the puppy eats it and I don’t much like some of the ingredients, it’s supermarket food and its soft, not much else I really have to say about it other than it makes her coat shine.

      Ziwipeak air dried these types of foods along with freeze dried by k9 natural are very good for older dogs, I personally feed Rusty our 8 year old chihuahua this food, the Ziwipeak and Ivory Coat and he has so much energy, his eyes became shiny again and his coat is like gold and so soft, he’s a short hair mind you so it’s soft to a point haha.

      My biggest concern at the end of the day however is that your dogs were on foods that are coated in flavour using digests and oils and their generally used to eating junk food, so you may end up having trouble switching them to a healthier food, because everyone knows that your first switch to healthy is gross, but you end up liking it the more you eat it, taste of the wild will likely be the best choice to try first because of the exotic assortment of flavours and than move onto a different food if you wish.
      Always remember to do a gradual switch, it’s listed on the bag usually in small print no wonder so many people switch cold turkey and than come home to vomit and diarrhoea everywhere.

  12. I have a Labrador Retriever 3 years old and he eats chicken frames for breaky and has a bowl of dry food have had the Royal Cain as it looked better nutritionally than the usual Pedigree or Supercoat. He used to take two to three days to eat a bowl before I had a sample of StayLoyal what a difference he loves it and looks better for it. Grain free seems they way to go.

    • Probably because although it may look better in some ways Royal is the same as pedigree or supercoat it’s just more expensive and apparantly doesn’t need to be because nothing in the ingredients list is worth $174 per bag (this is the most expensive bag they carry per pet circle).

      Hills has an even bigger disaster that came out recently that’s $123 for 6.5 kilos of corn, wheat and soy lol lovely I’m sure.

      • I don’t know how Hills have the audacity to charge so much for a bag of grains. That’s nearly $20/kilo – you can buy rump steak for that!

        • A lot of people never take a glance at the ingredients only look at the benefits and I’ve seen some truly disastrous comments that made me feel that the person thinks that corn is actually worth that much money, when clearly you can go into store and a whole can of kernels is only like $1, ground a few cans of those and it’s still not worth that much no matter how you look at it.

          Soy stuff is expensive for us, but unlikely very expensive in foods, they just need a way to rip of vegans.

          Don’t even start with wheat, that’s dirt cheap, look at the cheapest bags of bread at like $1.

  13. We took our 9 week old puppy to the Vet for his first check up. We received a Royal Canin gift bag including Royal Canin paediatric food, Royal Canin puppy guide, voucher for 50% off our next Royal Canin purchase. My Vet asked us what we have been feeding our puppy. I told him, ‘Ivory Coat,’ he said he had never heard of it. I won’t be changing to Royal Canin.

    • Good idea, Ivory Coat is of much higher quality and some of the foods Royal Canin have are so insanely priced they should be ashamed!

      Chances are he’s heard of it, just doesn’t want you to know that lol

  14. Hi could you let me know just how much salt is in your dog food thank you. Cheers Steve

    • Reply
      Pet Food Reviews (Australia) June 21, 2016 at 11:48 am

      Hi Steve, you’d have to ask Royal Canin directly and it varies depending on which recipe you’re feeding

  15. hi, I get the royal cannin prescription for urinary problems as my dog is prone to getting crystals. she is a very active happy dog, am I doing her a disservice by giving her a bodgy product, and if so what should I replace it with, my vet recommended this brand because it has more anti-inflammatory ingredients in it. Cheers! Mhairie

    • Reply
      Pet Food Reviews (Australia) February 3, 2016 at 11:01 am

      Hi Mhairie, if your dog isn’t suffering from crystals at the moment then I see no reason to feed Royal Canine Urinary. Did she suffer a urinary tract infection? We have a list of our best rated dog food which would be a good start in finding a nutritious diet, and ensure she has an adequate water intake as well.

  16. Hi, we’ve just bought the Royal Canin Breed Specific food – Golden Retriever. From looking at the ingredients it appears to perform slightly better than their Maxi Adult food as you’ve reviewed above, and I note that the ingredient list on the Australian food seems slightly better than the US version. I was wondering-

    1. Am I missing something? an ingredient split or something hiding in the list? the ingredients are as follows: dehydrated poultry protein, rice, maize, vegetable protein isolate*, animal fats, wheat, vegetable fibres, hydrolysed animal proteins, beet pulp, minerals, fish oil, soya oil, fructo-oligo-saccharides, psyllium husks and seeds, hydrolysed yeast (source of manno-oligo-saccharides), hydrolysed crustaceans (source of glucosamine), borage oil (0.1%), marigold extract (source of lutein), hydrolysed cartilage (source of chondroitin). ADDITIVES (per kg): Nutritional additives: Vitamin A: 24400 IU, Vitamin D3: 800 IU, E1 (Iron): 40 mg, E2 (Iodine): 2.8 mg, E4 (Copper): 9 mg, E5 (Manganese): 53 mg, E6 (Zinc): 198 mg, E8 (Selenium): 0.1 mg – Preservatives – Antioxidants. ANALYTICAL CONSTITUENTS: Protein: 29% – Fat content: 16% – Crude ash: 6.5% – Crude fibres: 3.8% –

    and 2. are the Australian and US products really actually different? or is it the same product but with a misleading ingredient list on the Aus or US product?

    Thanks!

    Kate

    • I should mention, we have bought the puppy version rather than the adult version

      • Reply
        Pet Food Reviews (Australia) December 6, 2015 at 6:24 am

        Hi Kate, puppy formulas are often formulated better but can be more expensive accordingly. With Golden Retriever Puppy it’s good to see a decent protein level of 29%. The negatives are the inclusions of the cheaper grains of wheat, corn, and rice. The corn will contribute to the amount of protein so you need to take note not all of that 29% protein comes from meat. Wheat is one of the main allergens with little nutritional value, and (white) rice doesn’t tend to be that much better.

  17. I cant believe that Royal Canin only gets the same rating as Optimum??? Surely its better than a supermarket brand.

    • Reply
      Pet Food Reviews (Australia) September 21, 2015 at 1:31 pm

      Hi Ceri, the Royal Canin formulas do vary somewhat, some deserving of 3 stars. In fact Maxi Adult has been slightly reformulated for the better, so compared with Optimum I’d rate it slightly higher as a high 2 star/low 3 star. Both brands are very heavy of fillers which provide little to no nutritional value for your dog.

  18. Iv been looking for a dog food that’s low in sodium. The only ones that seem to cover what I want are : for Cardiac
    ROYAL CANNIN
    Canine Early Cardiac Dry

    Hill’s Prescription Diet
    h/d Cardiac Health Dry Dog Food.

    Other ones are with these two brands that say they are low in sodium.
    But for making my own do you know of any other brands??
    Good brands?

    From what I can tell the Royal Cannin was better than the Hills if I had to choose.
    What do you think?

    • Reply
      Pet Food Reviews (Australia) March 11, 2015 at 12:49 am

      Hi Jasmine, brands like Hill’s and Royal Canin can cater for specific dietary requirements as they’re huge global manufacturers. Unfortunately for us the smaller manufacturers simply don’t have the resources to cater for such diets. When it comes to a low sodium diet you’re very limited, so perhaps feed Royal Canin mixed with a homemade diet or well chosen supplements.

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