Choosing the Right Dog Food: A Comprehensive Guide to Health and Wellness

For the past few months, I obsessed over dog food research. I want to switch the boys to a high-quality kibble because I want to ensure we’re doing everything we can to keep Emmett healthy and cancer-free. Let me tell you… the research available on dog food is pitiful, at best. Plus, the more I learned, the more distressed I was about the options. However, after weighing it all out, I (think) we’re switching to Wellness, though I haven’t yet committed enough to purchase a bag. (I keep going between that and Innova or Blue Buffalo… any opinions/ideas/benefits/drawbacks to either??)

Over my search, I encountered several useful sites and wanted to share them here because I know how frustrating and overwhelming it can be to research dog food:

• Dog Food Analysis: Rankings and reviews that include the product labels. Very helpful.
• FDA’s explanation of pet food labels: Dense, but useful. I learned a lot about what terms mean and it helped me to eliminate some options.
• The Dog Food Project: Detailed information on labels, how to read labels, and brand comparisons.

I know this is a highly contentious topic, especially with the movement for home-cooked and raw diets – neither of which are possible in our case for a variety of reasons, though we currently and will continue to supplement their kibble with meat and fresh fruits and vegetables.

What do you think? Any experience with the foods I mentioned? Or any research recommendations? I want to make this decision within the next couple of days so that I can purchase the new food while I still have some old food left to transition!!