Kibble quest

A quest for kibble? Yes. Kibble. Dog food conveniently delivered in a large bag. What about home cooked or going raw? It crossed my mind. But I have to admit that home cooked dog food in my case is wishful thinking. Feeding raw has my interest and I will keep my eyes and ears open on how it will develop further. But for now it is kibble. Because it is convenient. But how to find a quality that ensures a long and healthy life for my dogs. Surely that must be possible?

I chew this during your quest
Inconvenient doubts

The products we have been using so far were brought to us by the sponsored recommendations from the breeder (Techni-call), the dog training school (Olivers) and our vetenerian (Hill's Science Plan). My own clumsy attempts to find higher quality dog food lead me to Regal Pet Foods and CANIDAE.

Kenzo, our dog, thrived on all of the brands we have used so far and had no health issues what so ever. But would it stay that way on the long run? The list with recalled kibble is staggering long. And why use money on a bag that mainly contained cheap fillers like corn and wheat but was marketed well for a high price, if a bag of quality food could be attainable for almost the same amount?

Welcome to the jungle

Finding better information on dog nutrition to sustain my kibble quest was not easy. I went to a seminar on dog nutrition, read a couple of books, and spent hours of reading and browsing on the Internet, if not days. Only to find out that it would take a PhD. degree, preferably in nutrition, to be able to call myself capable of making a good choice. Suppliers are just to sophisticated in their marketing. As an example try to Google "corn in dog food". You will find as many experts arguing in favor of corn as you will find arguing against it.

I am not going to try to be another expert, you have to make up your own mind. If you go corn, or no corn. If you go organic or not. If you accept meat byproducts. Want fruits and vegetables in your dog food, and so on. That said, I hope you go no corn, organic, do not accept byproducts, want fruits and veggies. And while we are at it, lets add Omega3/6 fatty acids to that list. Sorry, I couldn't resist.

When it is time to find the kibble that meets you criteria you should try the Dog Food Rating Tool on the K9cuisine.com website. It was a big help to me.

How does it work

The Dog Food Rating Tool asks you 31 questions about the ingredients list of your dog food. It delivers a great recommendation of what could be improved, but also tells what was good about the ingredient list. Why certain questions are asked is explained along the way. Which helps to understand why a certain result is reached.

Here is an example of what the Dog Food Rating Tool told me about Orijen Adult, the brand I chose as the kibble we are going to use from now on:

Your score is: 109 out of 100

Grade: A+

Summary:

Fruits: The grade was raised because the food contains fruit. Higher quality foods are adding fruits to maximize nutrients not found in other complex carbohydrate ingredients. This is another distinguishing characteristic of super premium pet foods.

Vegetables: The grade was raised because the food contains vegetables. Vegetables are a great source of complex carbohydrates and are being added to higher quality super premium foods to improve specific nutritional values.

Fish Oil: The grade was raised because the food contains fish oil. Fish oils are excellent sources of Omega 3 fatty acids. They contain Omega 3 Fatty Acid. They are excellent sources of much needed Essential Fatty Acids (EFA).

Hormone-free and Antibiotic-free: The grade was raised because the meats are hormone and antibiotic free. Some manufacturers of super premium foods are certifying the meats to be hormone and antibiotic free. We believe this is a good practice and helps distinguish super premium brands.

Glucosamine and/or Chondroitin: The grade was raised because it contains glucosamine and/or chondroitin?. Glucosamine and chondroitin are supplements which improve a pet’s joint health. Some super premium foods are incorporating these supplements in their ingredients. At K9 Cuisine we favor foods that contain glucosamine and chondroitin.


Above is the result for Orijen Adult. I was in doubt on two of the questions. One was the "is the food baked or extruded?". Orijen Adult is steam cooked. Which is a fancy name for extruded. And a question if the food contained salt. Orijen Adult contains a little sea-salt, but would that count as salt? Also I misunderstood their claim to be "biological appropiate" to be organic. Which it is not. I run the Tool twice with different answers and it scored lower as a result, but still an A, instead of an A+.

If you are on a quest too, try the Dog Food Rating Tool, it is a great help. Kudos to the people of K9cuisine.com for bringing this tool. Anthony Holloway, CEO and founder, even answered my questions on Twitter and gave me some leads to quality dog foods that are exported to Europe. That made it much easier for me as not all brands are available outside the US.

But is it convenient?

The downside of my whole quest is that I did find quality, but found myself challenged on the convenience side. I learned that in Denmark, we are way behind the US on dog nutrition. Walking in a pet shop brings the usual brands: Hill's, Royal Canin and Eukanuba, together with one or two more obscure ones. But not necessarily of a better quality then the former mentioned.

The brands that deliver quality are usually from the US and Canada and are hard to get. They don't run all the products from a brand, but only one or two. With Regal Pet Foods I ran into a delivery problem. With CANIDAE I couldn't get a bag that hadn't passed the expiration date. For Orijen I found only 3 shops (thankfully with Internet shops) that carried the brand.

I guess that on my quest I found a business opportunity too, that would just need some good marketing ... ahum.