Best Food For Shelties in the USA?

I fed Brodie ProPlan Savor chicken shreds when he was a pup as that was what the breeder fed him. He never 'dug into' the food, would pick this out, that out.... I switched him to Merrick Puppy - we fed both our doxies Merrick grain free for years. I had always been a fan of Merrick - until Brodie. Merrick was far too rich for Brodie, he had really loose stools from it even with a really, really slow turn over. We did a really slow return to the Savor (label and name are changed now) but he really balked at it. I started reading up on foods, ran across a super long thread here on sheltie diets and protein levels and then read up on all sorts of info with the DCM issues and peas seem to be an issue in many foods. Many manufacturers have added peas to dog food as it is a cheap source of protein. The search began for a food without peas, within the protein levels I found here on SN.

I ended up with Fromm Puppy for Brodie and Fromm Adult Gold for Kooper. At a year we did the switch over to Adult Gold for Brodie and he's been on it since. I am just about in the process of switching Kooper to Fromm Senior Gold. New puppy will be on the relabeled ProPlan Savor but will eventually be switched to Fromm Puppy.

I supplement with Nature's Farmacy Dogzyme's Complete - now only for Brodie, I recently stopped Kooper as he is having senior kidney issues. Kooper gets a kidney supplement which was added 6 months ago, his liver counts got worse so I am hoping the senior food and kidney supplement only will lower his counts a bit for our next testing. A few nights a week Kooper gets an egg for dinner instead of kibble, both dog get green beans on occasion as well as sardines, salmon sometimes.

I've slowly cut back this year on many of the extra treats we use. We are down to Mother Hubbard mini biscuits (half) for potty treats, homemade liver treats for Brodie's training and bully sticks and Himalayan cheese chews mainly for Brodie.
 
Last edited:
Bill Porter said:
Which Fromm do you use? There's a black bag for Adult Gold and a purple bag for Adult Small Breed Gold. My 33 (maybe 35lb now) Sheltie does not seem small.

For those of you feeding Pro Plan Lamb Sensitive is that with Rice or with Oatmeal?

Thank you.
Click to expand...
I think it's oatmeal. Purina Beyond also has a Lamb food, minimal ingredients and cheaper
 
So, YouTube seems to know me well and posted a 32 minute advertisement for Dr. Marty's Nature's Blend dog food. I watched about 25 min of it while doing some paperwork.

Have any of y'all seen that ad? He makes a great case for his food or at least feeding your dog raw meat: https://dogfoodexpose.com/

Has anyone tried it? Just curious.
 
Bill Porter said:
So, YouTube seems to know me well and posted a 32 minute advertisement for Dr. Marty's Nature's Blend dog food. I watched about 25 min of it while doing some paperwork.

Have any of y'all seen that ad? He makes a great case for his food or at least feeding your dog raw meat: https://dogfoodexpose.com/

Has anyone tried it? Just curious.
Click to expand...
Thank you for sharing this video Bill! Great video and very informative!I’m happy to see I’m doing all the right things for my dogs (I feed raw) but good info about kibble as well. Reminds me of the Pet Fooled video on Netflix.
 
Piper's mom said:
Thank you for sharing this video Bill! Great video and very informative!I’m happy to see I’m doing all the right things for my dogs (I feed raw) but good info about kibble as well. Reminds me of the Pet Fooled video on Netflix.
Click to expand...

Well, I'm not one for infomercials but I was doing something else when this ad/video popped up on YouTube and so I let it go longer than normal. As I listened, I was impressed with the guy's credentials at the beginning and then his explanation of things made me think he might be right. Like I said before, I don't really trust one person completely but I try to learn as much as I can from various sources and then make up my own opinion. Thank you for letting me know about your dog's nutrition!
 
Dr. Marty Goldstein has been well known in the field of holistic medication for years around here. We used his homeopathic tests for diagnostics and products for my epilectic girl, Pixie, years ago which helped her enormously. He is probably one of the most knowlegeable vets in the field. I've never used his food, but I'd certainly take his advice or consider his recommendations.
 
A bit of a follow up on this thread. I've done some extensive searching for the ultimate food for my precious pup. If I was immensely wealthy, I'd buy this air dried New Zealand product called Kiwi Peak. Similar to Dr. Marty's but "supposedly" with better ingredients and no recalls ever. But when I looked at the cost, it's $145 for an 8.8lb bag.

All 3 of the vets in our practice feed their dogs Purina Pro Plan - either Chicken & Rice or one uses a fish version for skin issues. That being said, we might eventually move over to it, but we're going to stick with Fromm for now as he has done well on it.

Speaking of Fromm, Remy is now a 40lb Sheltie with a "good weight" according to the vet (that just neutered him). Fromm Small Breed is out of the mix so now it's a choice between Fromm Adult (black bag) and a newer product called Fromm Ancient Grain Adult. Ancient grain has a few less calories and fat, and uses Sorghum as its primary grain. Internet research isn't the best but my vet looked it up on some vet site and said that sorghum is a healthy choice.

Does anyone know anything about sorghum in dog food here? Or have you tried Ancient Grain?

Thank you for your time.

__WarChild__
 
Occasionally I feed my dogs a dehydrated raw called Smack. A 5.5 pound bag is$115. However because its dehydrated you feed considerably less. Still expensive and I wouldn’t feed twice daily because of the cost but once in a while or sometimes a small handful. Mind you my dogs are small, I wouldn’t feed this to a big dog...you’d go broke lol.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top