We have been shopping at Healthy Pet on upper State Street since we moved to Santa Barbara, and yesterday I was reminded of why. We don’t even live in the San Roque neighborhood anymore, but it feels good to shop at an independently owned family business – especially one that takes pride in knowing all the facts about their distributors, manufacturers and products. In short, it’s important for us to shop with vendors we can trust. Remember the dog food recall a few years ago? Healthy Pet doesn’t even sell any of the products that were recalled.
While on an extended road trip over the summer, we ran out of dry dog food. We’ve been feeding the dogs Canidae since they were puppies – the result of a week long taste testing experiment that would make Cesar Millan roll his eyes. In any case, we found ourselves in the middle of what a friend refers to as “Food Deserts.” These are parts of the country where whole grains, organic food and sustainably raised meats are honestly not available within hundreds of miles. Apparently, the same designation applies to pet food. So we found ourselves in one of those giant warehouse stores. You know – the ones you have nightmares about being stuck in during an earth quake – fifty vertical feet of product and 20 aisles to wander.
We finally found the dry food area, and no surprise, Canidae was not available. For over 30 minutes we compared ingredient labels to price points. For example, one brand might be the cheapest, but there were no food products in it. Now, before you get ready to go off about my arugula-loving elitism, keep in mind that we had about 5,000 miles and 4 more weeks in an enclosed vehicle and tent with these dogs, so messing around too much with their digestive system was not an option. We opted for a well respected, medium-high priced, mediocre product. I say mediocre because only a few of the ingredients were at loosely derived from actual food products. When I say the product is “well respected,” I mean that it is available at most veterinary offices – though I have to say I have no idea why.
The dogs loved the new food. I mean loved it – in almost a creepy way. At first we thought it was cute, but then it seemed not quite right once we started seeing overt behavioral changes. Truman, who never begs, and used to go back to bed after eating, became monster-like famished before and after a meal. He would eat ravenously, and then frantically lick his bowl for sometimes 20 minutes after the food was gone. Then he would come in the house and surf the counters, beg at the table, whine at the refrigerator, even steal raw vegetable scraps from the trash! When daylight savings came around this year we planned our schedules around being home early – afraid of what starving doggie-disaster we’d come home to if his dinner what an hour late. It was positively unnerving, and it seemed we were being cruel in some accidental way.
So one night I said to my partner, “Remember the David Kessler book that got a lot of press last summer? What if the dog food industry manufactures dry food to be chemically designed to cause insatiability? What if we are doing the brain-chemistry equivalent of feeding him just 3 corn chips a day or something?”
The more we thought about it, the more plausible it sounded. After all, there’s no actual food in the product, and Truman used to be such a food snob he would skip a meal before eating something questionable, so how do they get dogs like him to eat it? Further, if we are to try our best to walk the talk of the Sacred Harvest manifesto, doesn’t that also apply to pet food? Why should it be acceptable that the pet food industry be exempt from humane and sustainable practices? Don’t the same environmental impacts merit accountability?
With these questions on my mind I went to Healthy Pet for a dry food refill – not sure of which one to buy. Thanks to one of the most informative and unbiased customer service experiences I’ve ever had, I bought the Canidae. It turns out that in a way we were not far off in our food conspiracy theories. Canidae is a full 10% higher in protein than the crack food, while being slightly lower in fat. Sodium and carbohydrates apparently aren’t required to be listed, but based upon the carbohydrate-derived ingredients in the crack food, I think we can safely deduce it’s a pretty high carb food.
Then I asked the big question, “So which of the high end dog foods are really the best?” If you’ve shopped around, you know it possible to spend hundreds of dollars a month on dog food – so how do you get the best quality for the best price? It turns out that they are all pretty comparable. Some manufacturers are bigger companies so they can afford better wholesale prices, but for the most part if you assess the points listed below you are getting a good product. More importantly, if you have questions, your best bet is to shop at a store like Healthy Pet where they have the answers.
Dry Dog Food Assessment:
1. Is the food manufactured in the United States?
2. Are the top 1-3 ingredients meat (not by-product or flavor)
3. What is the protein to fat ratio
4. Avoid grain fillers like corn, soy and wheat (these are high allergy reactive foods for dogs, and empty calories)
5. Look for whole grains like barley, brown rice, millet, oatmeal
6. Look to see that the entire ingredient list is mostly comprised of food products, not chemically derived components
Top Ten Ingredients in Canidae:
1. Chicken Meal
2. Turkey Meal
3. Lamb Meal
4. Brown Rice
5. White Rice
6. Rice bran
7. Peas
8. Potatoes
9. Oatmeal
10. Cracker Pearled Barley
Top Ten Ingredient Listed in “Crack Food”
1. Ground whole grain corn
2. Chicken by-product meal
3. Animal Fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols and citric acid)
4. Soybean Mill Run
5. Flaxseed
6. Chicken Liver Flavor
7. Corn Gluten Meal
8. Dried Egg Product
9. Potassium Chloride
10. Vitamins (followed by a list of enriched vitamin products, components, etc)
What is dried egg product, how is corn a whole grain or a gluten meal, and what is chicken by-product and liver flavor made of? I’ll have to save that research project for another day, but for now I’ll just get it out of my house.
