@RottieMom, it is notoriously hard on dog’s GI tracts to process large amounts of low quality and low calorie processed foods that are mostly plant-based ingredients and/or carbohydrates.
As a species, the kibble diet is a very unnatural one for dogs. And the capacity to process carbohydrates is unevenly distributed among the dog population.
My very active Vizsla eats meat, organs, and edible bones. Not a huge amount (since the meals are nutrient dense and bioavailable. He has no need to process “fillers” since there are none in his diet. In consequence, his stools are very small and well-formed and look almost like they come from a different species. They look more like wild-animal scat compared to the loose and huge plops of poop left by kibble fed dogs.
Unfortunately, most kibble formulas include a lot of low-nutrient “stuff” that a dog has to pass through its GI tract with little or no benefit and with a lot of downsides. This is very rough on dogs and harder on some than others.
I trust that you will get a lot of contradictory advice on this thread. I’m telling you the benefits I’ve seen feeding dogs as nature intended vs the cereal-based commercial diets that large marketing efforts have convinced too many of us to accept as “normal” when it is in fact not in the interest of our canine companions.
You will have to use your own inner-intelligence to weight the options.
Best.
Bill
