Adventures in Dog Food

My husband and i were talking with some people from our doggie circle (aka- the neighborhood pets from all the condos that gather in the park after work to play and visit) ... about pet food.

We know that MEAT should be the first ingredient in a "quality" dog food and when we first got Roxy, we didn't have all the time in the world to compare every bag of food in the store since she was so scared at first. We just took some advice from the people in the store and grabbed a small bag from the "Better" section (At pet smart they segregate their dog food by aisle. Good dog food, better dog food, and Best dog food). We picked up a small bag to make sure she liked it and we figured it would give us some time to test the waters.

We paid around $12 for the 4.5 lb bag.

My husband and I want to be good to our little love bug and feed her quality... but we also wanted to be practical about it. SCB said he was okay with us continuing to get the "better" type foods from pet smart since she seemed to eat it fine-- but only if we took the effort to shop around first and try to compare the labels since the pet store was probably the pricier option.

A lot of time its hard to compare brands together because they are often are not sold in the same stores... or in the same packaging. But the key to comparison is the ingredient list (and if your dog will eat it).

Since we are almost through the bag (1/3 left), we decided now would be the time to hunt around. If we decided to buy something new, we would still have enough of her old food left to slowly mix into the new food so there would be less chance of anything not agreeing with her ... or we would have enough food if she didn't like anything new we tried.

So we started at Walmart. I couldn't remember what the ingredients were in ours from home and I didn't have a list on me, but since pet smart is next door to Walmart, we decided to just take a look and snap photos of any of the brands that listed Meat as the first ingredient.

We turned every bag over and they only had one brand in which meat was the first ingredient in the whole store... and get this... they wanted less than $7 for the small bag (which was a full 5 lbs instead of 4.5 lbs...)

So, we snapped the picture and went next door to Pet Smart so we could look at what we had been buying... and we were a little floored. Meat wasn't the first ingredient...

It was Chicken meal... I turned over the bag in my hands for a bit and kept comparing it to my phone picture. When I looked deep in thought, one of the store clerks (who happened to be the manager) came over to see if I needed any help. I fibbed and told her my "friend" sent me a picture of what she feeds her dog and I wanted to know which one was better... what we were buying currently or the brand from my phone.

The lady looked at my phone and then at me and said hands down, the black bag on your phone,

"Your friend probably bought that at some high end dog boutique..."

It listed both chicken and then chicken meal as the top 2 ingredients... and she pointed out that you could pronounce more of the ingredients in the pure balance mix than you could in the natures recipe so that made it also better. Being the good sales lady she was, she steered us down the isle where the BEST dog food is and told me that the brands on that isle would be more similar to what was pictured on my phone... and of course they wanted WAY more for those then Walmart wanted for the Pure Balance... even their store version was way more.

So we thanked her, left... and went next door... back to walmart and picked up the Pure Balance for $7...

The next day when I fed roxy we mixed in 1/4 cup of the new stuff with 3/4 of the old... Guess what she picked out first, nugget by nugget? The Pure Balance.

Look who's happy! She so belongs to us!

In case you were all wondering.... this is not a sponsored post and i'm not getting anything out of sharing this little story with you all. :)