Your puppy has been eating NutriSource Small & Medium Breed Puppy Food

 

We recommend feeding this food until you switch to adult dog food.
(Your puppy can be switched to adult food after their adult teeth have come in.)

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Feeding Schedule:

Feed your puppy 3-4 times a day, as much as they will eat at a time.

By the time your puppy is switched to adult food, they should be eating twice a day.

 

Your puppy is eating NutriSource Small & Medium Breed Puppy food. We love NutriSource for puppy food!  The pieces are smaller than other puppy foods and work great for weaning. You can continue to feed NutriSource once your puppy is an adult or we have other recommended dog foods below. 

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Recommended Adult Dog Foods
(alphabetical order)

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  Dr. Harvey's

          All recipes

  Fromm

          Adult Classic

          Small Breed Adult Gold

          Adult Gold

          Adult Gold with Ancient Grains

          Adult Four Star Chicken A La Veg

          Adult Four Star Duck A La Veg

          Adult Four Star Salmon A La Veg

          Adult Four Star Highlander Beef, Oats, 'n Barley Recipe

​  Holistic Select

          Anchovy & Sardine and Salmon Meal Recipe

          Chicken & Brown Rice Recipe

  NutriSource 

          Small Bites Chicken & Rice Recipe

          Chicken & Rice Recipe

          Beef & Rice Recipe

          Lamb & Rice Recipe

         Trout & Rice Recipe

  NutriSource Choice

          Chicken Meal & Barley Recipe

          Turkey Meal & Barley Recipe

          Whitefish Meal & Rice Recipe

  NutriSource Elements

          Coastal Plains Recipe

          Open Waters Recipe

          Outback Trails Recipe

          Wildlands Recipe

  NutriSource PureVita

          Chicken & Brown Rice Entree

          Duck & Oatmeal Entree

          Salmon & Potato Entree

  Stella & Chewy's

          All recipes (A good source for treats as well)

  Wellness Core

          Digestive Health Small Breed Chicken & Brown Rice

          Digestive Health Chicken & Brown Rice

          Digestive Health Whitefish & Brown Rice

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The below foods use human-grade ingredients instead of feed-grade.

Sport Dog Food and UnKibble are the only two "dry" foods, the rest resemble home cooked meals. 

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  Honest Kitchen

          Dehydrated Whole Grain Turkey

          Dehydrated Whole Grain Beef

          Dehydrated Gourmet Grains Chicken & Duck

          Dehydrated Gourmet Grains Turkey & Whitefish

          Dehydrated Gourmet Grains Fish & Oat

          Whole Grain Chicken Clusters for Small Breeds

          Whole Grain Chicken Clusters

          Whole Grain Beef & Oat with Turkey Clusters

  Just Food For Dogs (Fresh Frozen or Pantry Fresh)

          Chicken & White Rice Recipe

          Turkey & Whole Wheat Macaroni Recipe

          Venison & Squash Recipe

          Lamb & Brown Rice Recipe

          Balanced Remedy Recipe

          Joint & Skin Recipe

  Small Batch

          Lightly Cooked Chicken Batch

          Lightly Cooked Beef Batch

  Sport Dog Food (dry food)

          All Recipes

  Spot Farms

          All Recipes

  UnKibble (dry food)

          Chicken & Brown Rice Recipe

          Cod & Salmon Recipe

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If you have any questions about feeding any of these foods, or any other foods not on this list, feel free to contact us!

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If you choose to feed something else, remember these guidelines.
Do not feed dog food with:

   ●Meat Meal (If doesn’t say chicken meal, fish meal, etc, then it is “you don’t want to know”)

   ●Poultry By-Product Meal (same as above, should say turkey meal, chicken meal, etc)

   ●Animal Fat (you want it to say chicken fat)

   ●Legumes (soybeans, peas, lentils, chickpeas/garbanzo beans)

   ●Soy Products

   ●Canola Oil (this is a way to cut costs, and is not healthy for humans or our pets)

   ●Corn Syrup

Please keep in mind most dog food brands offer a variety of types, so you have to check ingredients.
Also, companies are NOT REQUIRED to notify consumers when they change their recipe.
I always skim the label every time I buy a bag of dog food.

 

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A note on grain-free dog foods

I do NOT RECOMMEND feeding your dog foods that have legumes!

Legumes include peas, lentils, & chickpeas (garbanzo beans).

Almost all grain free dog foods are replacing grains with one or more of those three ingredients.
 

Carbohydrates are added to dog food to keep costs low enough that consumers will buy them. The grain-free trend has forced dog food companies to find another carbohydrate source other than grains, and unfortunately that was legumes. As a breeder, I have long known that legumes were something I should avoid because it will affect the hormones of the dogs, so it was alarming when almost all the foods I saw in stores started to put legumes in their foods.

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More reasons not to feed dog food with legumes:

If you are feeding grain free because dogs are carnivores and should eat like wolves, then why would you replace one plant with another? (ie replace a grain with a legume)
A dog food company using grains to lower the price is no different than a dog food company using legumes to lower the price.
Most of the time health problems aren’t from the grains in dog food, it’s the quality of all the ingredients in the dog food. Processed dog food uses ingredients that are “feed-grade”, which means not fit for human consumption (unless it states on the bag “human-grade”.)
No one knows the long term effects of feeding legumes to dogs every day. Veterinarians are now suggesting that legumes fed daily cause heart problems in dogs!

 

The best food for a dog is home-made, but this is a daunting task and should only be done by people who really want to or enjoy it. For the majority of people, commercial dog food is the only way. Grain free foods that do not have legumes in them are very hard to find unless you buy dehydrated, freeze-dried, or frozen raw dog foods.

 

Do not be afraid to feed grains, dogs have been with us for thousands of years, and over those thousands of years, dogs have adapted to the foods we eat. With the creation of purebred dogs, this is even more true. When a new purebred was created, it was fed what the people in that time period and country were cultivating. People only bred dogs that were healthy, so if a dog wasn’t thriving on what they were feeding, it wasn’t bred. These means that some breeds will actually do better on some grains because they were created to digest it properly. I have not found many references to legumes being a fed like grains were at that time period. Dogs were fed meat, grains, and vegetables.​

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If you can’t feed your dog a diet that mimics a carnivore’s diet,

then please choose a dog food with grain in it over a dog food with legumes!

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A Short History of Dog Food

 

More than 2,000 years ago, Roman poet and philosopher Marcus Terentius Varro wrote the first farming manual. In it he advised giving farm dogs barley bread soaked in milk, and bones from dead sheep.

 

During the Middle Ages, it was common for European aristocrats to have kennels for their hounds. Kennel cooks would make huge stews of grains and vegetables with meat or meat byproducts -the hearts, livers, and lungs of various livestock.

 

Dogs in common households were used for guarding, and had meager diets of only what their owners could spare. A normal domesticated dog's diet consisted of crusts of bread, bare bones, potatoes, cabbage, or whatever else they could scrounge on their own.

 

In the 18th century, farm dogs needed to be kept healthy so they could work, and were fed regularly with mixes of grains and lard.

 

In cities, people would search for dead horses, cut them up, and sell the meat to wealthy dog owners. 

 

Hounds kept by the upper class were kept in giant heated kennels, and were fed boiled meat and oatmeal.

 

In the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution created a growing middle class with more luxury and more leisure time, and pets began to be regarded as "luxury items" by common people. Pet food began to be scrutinized and many self-styled experts started giving advice on dog diets - dogs needed to be "civilized," and since wild dogs ate raw meat, domesticated dogs shouldn't. (That advice influenced the pet food industry for decades after.)

 

Regardless of when or where, throughout all of history, the very wealthy have fed their pet dogs foods that were much better than what most humans ate. In the 1800s Empress Tzu Hsi of China was known to feed her Pekingese shark fins, quail breasts, and antelope milk. European nobility fed their dogs roast duck, cakes, candies, and even liquor. 

 

 

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The creation of dog food as we know it

 

Dry dog food was created in the middle of the 19th century. A man from Cincinnati named James Spratt went to London, and when his ship arrived, crew members threw the leftover "ship's biscuits" onto the dock. They were devoured by hordes of waiting dogs, and this gave Spratt an idea. He could make cheap, easy-to-serve biscuits and then sell them to the growing number of urban dog owners.

 

"Ship's biscuits," or hard tack, were the standard fare for sailors for centuries. Flour, water, and salt were mixed into a stiff dough, baked, and left to harden and dry. The biscuits were easily stored and had an extremely long shelf life, which was important in the days before refrigeration. (They looked a lot like today's dog biscuits.) 

 

Spratt’s recipe for his dog food: a baked mixture of wheat, beet root, and vegetables bound together with beef blood. When Spratt's Patent Meal Fibrine Dog Cakes came on the market in 1860, the pet food industry was born. Spratt's Dog Cakes were a hit in England, so in 1870 he took the business to New York …and began the American pet food industry.

 

100 years later in 1964, processed pet food manufacturers wanted to increase their sales and targeted pet owners that still insisted on feeding their dogs whatever was in their refrigerator. The pet food industry, along with the PFI, joined together with a whole bunch of marketing dollars and launched one of the most influential campaigns the pet world had ever seen: the “Ban All Table Scraps from your Pets’ Bowls” campaign! Through thousands of newspapers, magazines, and news stations, the public was warned about the dangers of table food scraps or “human food” and the importance of feeding “processed” commercial pet food. Not only did this clever campaign work, but it was so impactful that now, 50 years later, folks are still in fear of offering anything that is not labeled pet food. (Rodney Habib - Link to the full article here)