Hi Honey Bar-
Firstly about Pet Fooled. I too watched it, but had a different reaction than probably most did. I’ve spent several years now researching nutrition, the pet food industry and pet food. When I first started out, I read about a lot of the stuff discussed on that documentary and I was outraged. I, like you, swore I would eventually fed my dogs a raw diet I prepared myself and would not “support” the large pet food manufacturers like Hill’s. It took me a while to realize that the vast majority of the voices making the claims like the ones in Pet Fooled were more concerned about their own agenda than the truth.
Anyway, needless to say, I no longer agree with the opinions expressed on that documentary.
As far as your families choice of Hill’s goes. Looks like it has been a good one. 12 years old and still going strong is great for a large breed. If you would like to see what even a huge Hill’s critic like Whole Dog Journal has to say about the company itself here are a couple articles they wrote about their trip to the Hill’s research facility in Kansas back in 2012
https://www.whole-dog-journal.com/issues/15_6/features/Pet-Food-Research-Practices_20547-1.html
https://www.whole-dog-journal.com/blog/Hills-Science-Diet-Dog-Food-Manufacturing-Plant-20492-1.html
Whole Dog Journal is notorious for their slander against the big pet food manufacturers and even they could not say anything negative about the company when they toured the facility and manufacturing plant.
As far as searching for crediable information goes, I don’t know that I could, as an intelligent person judge the crediability of the information someone presents based on their number of followers on Facebook… In college and grade school we are taught to use peer reviewed scholorly research articles when writing a paper and doing research. The same applies to the topic of pet nutrition.
Here are the websites of two veterinary nutritionists who are renowned in the field: http://www.susanwynn.com/
https://www.petdiets.com/
The second site even has a function that allows you to ask a question and receive an answer from one of their nutritionists.
To touch on your question about raw feeding. While I am not against the incorporation of fresh foods to any living creatures diet, I have never quite understood this desire to feed a raw diet simply because the owner wants to feed their dog like a wolf. Wolves in the wild do not eat an optimal diet and do not live very long. Yes, other factors like predators come in to play, but in most regions(at least in the US) wolves reign supreme on the totem pole.
My belief is that when an owners sole reason for wanting to feed a raw diet comes from this thought that your dog is the ancestor of a wolf and therefore should be fed like one, this is when problems arise when a deficient diet. You see a lot of folks feeding raw chicken and potato and calling it a day and proudly saying they are feeding a “BARF” diet.
Fed long term, that diet will cause extreme sickness from multiple vitamin and mineral deficiencies that could even be fatal.
All that being said, it is important that you discuss your thoughts with your parents as you are living with them like you said. It’s moot to even consider the option of a raw diet before that conversation happens.
Oh and as an aside: Isn’t the pup in my profile picture just simply gorgeous? He eats Purina Pro Plan 🙂
