# Food for both my Spoo and Boxador?



## Toy poodlelvr (Mar 24, 2013)

Of course the dogs love it , it's all fill with fillers!!! IAMS is NOT a good food. It is a in a low star rating in dog food advisor. You should try Orijen/Acana( They both are made by the same company, but Orijen has a higher protein.) they both are 4-5 star rating. Or you could go to dog food advisor or dog food analysis website and search a better brand. Maybe try some other foods like solid gold, earthborn, taste of the wild, etc. You should check the food ingredients, it should NOT contain corn,wheat, and soy. The first 5 ingredients should be any type of meal (ex: chicken meal, turkey meal,etc), good fillers ( ex: oatmeal,etc.),etc.


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## Mom-n-Reiki (Jan 6, 2013)

For Petsmart available foods,
I love Blue Buffalo's Wilderness line (grain free), but any of their foods are excellent. Right now we are feeding Nutro's working dog formula as are dogs well, work, and are extremely active. It is chicken and rice based and they are doing very well on it. Wellness and Organix also really good.
I actually reccomend going on weekends in the late morning when the food reps come. Usually for Blue Buffalo and Nutro as they can answer a ton of questions. The store's pet trainer is also usually trained to answer food questions (though to what extent depends on how much they wanted to learn  ).

The trick with Petsmart is they organize the quality of their food by isle. The higher quality (and priced) foods tend to be set closer towards the front of the store and the lowest quality (and cheapest) foods towards the back, depending on how the store is set up. I tend to recomend people find the isle with Science Diet (if faceing the entrance to the isle it is typically on the left hand side), then go one isle over (usually a step to the right since now most stores put the dog food on the right hand side of the store. Or towards the front of the store depending on its arrangement. If you hit the isle with Authority/Purina/Iams/Eukanuba, you went the wrong way!), and start looking. The best quality foods are usually found right after the grooming and travel sections. (Can you tell I used to work for the company? Lol)

Petsupermarket carries Taste of the Wild which is a less expensive grain free food that a lot of dogs like a do well on. 
Petco and Petsupermarket carry Solid Gold, which I know a lot of people like. Petco also has the Nature's Variety line that is excellent.

If you are near a small family owned store, Orijen and Acana are excellent (Acana made my Dane greasy though) foods and Innova Evo is great as well. My favorite small scale food is Earthborn (their grain free line has four foods you can rotate between) and I have never had a dog do poorly on it but it is hard to find in some places!

I hope this makes sense and good luck! 

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## Crewsinn (Jun 25, 2012)

Thanks M&R, it made perfect sense! My dad has a 14 year old retriever/spaniel mix and I usually volunteer to go get her food just because I love PetSmart, haha. I always leave with more than I intended to buy, so the dogs are constantly getting new toys and treats. We feed her Natural Choice for seniors, both the can and dry food. It is quite expensive, but she's very healthy and you'd never guess she's 14, so it's worth the price. 
One of the trainers there is very friendly, she 'hooks me up' with coupons (lol) and answers any general questions I have. So I'll probably ask her for help if I get overwhelmed haha. 
I think I will try Blue Buffalo's! I know exactly which aisle you are referring to. 

And thanks for the tip, toypoodlelvr! I didn't know about the meal thing. I'll definitely be sure to look at that when buying food in the future!


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## Mom-n-Reiki (Jan 6, 2013)

Yay! I'm glad you understood that! 

BB is excellent and I find my dogs eat less and poop less on it, though the first time we switched, the gas was would clear the room! It did pass though I did some returns for people that couldn't handle it. Haha. We were switching from Pedigree and Beniful(the rescues fed it) so it took a few weeks for their systems to adjust. But oh the difference! 
The Wilderness formulas are typically between $56 -$60 (big bag) but they usually have at least one flavor on sale (Salmon is awesome!). The grain formulas are less. Our Dane was on 9 cups of Beniful when we got him and he went down to 4ish cups of Wilderness, if that helps perspective. 

The working dog formula my pups are on now is $45ish and Cricket the greyhound is 78lbs and eats about 6 cups (active skinny dog) and our mutt creature should be eating about 1/2 - 3/4 of a cup but Hubby feeds her about 1 1/2 ish because he forgets when he's fed her. She is still really hyper at almost 3 so the extra protein has helped.

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## MollyMuiMa (Oct 13, 2012)

The Costco Kirkland brand is 4 star rated and very economical...........! Grain free too!


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## powertothepoodle (Sep 7, 2013)

One of my favorites is fish4dogs and taste of the wild (which also comes in wet food). Osopure is grain free and comes in a variety of flavors like bison and duck.


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## Lou (Sep 22, 2012)

I got Lou my apricot female first then rescued Apollo when they were both 12 months old, they got confused having 2 bowls, but I put the 2 bowls about 6 feet apart from each other and guided them to the correct bowl and watched them eat the first few times correcting them and guiding them to their bowl when needed, they learned quickly! And even now that I just moved to a new house I taught them again which bowl is whose and they are cool with it, I ALWAYS have my eyes on them so if one tried to sniff the other's food a "AH-AH" is enough to discourage them now, I want to be able to look at the bowl after their done and see how much they ate, since they are picky eaters I wanna make sure they eat enough, sometimes I have to tell them "eat your food!" cause they need to be reminded to eat LOL.

so maybe with a little bit of training your dogs would learn to eat out of 1 bowl only? 

Also I did a lot research before I chose their food, a 5-star food that tastes good to them. I don't know if this website is reputable or not, but it helped me make my decision. www.dogfoodadvisor.com 
And it took me a long time to find the right food, the right amount, the right mix and ratio. 

Just as an example this is what I feed them (2 x a day) LOL

Lou: 1and 3/4 cups of blue wilderness salmon kibble + 1/3 of a can of blue wilderness (various flavors) + 1 tbl spoon of unseasoned canned pumpkin
Apollo: 2 cups of blue wilderness salmon kibble + 1/6 of a can of blue wilderness (various flavors) + 1 tbl spoon of unseasoned canned pumpkin

Some days they eat it all, some days they eat less... But they have optimum poops!! LOL (that's how I found out Apollo needed less canned food than Lou because it's too rich for him  )

Ps. I'm a Petsmart person too 




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