Hi dendad-
This is a blow to most of us who have been feeding “fancy” grain free food. It is tough thinking that we are doing the best for our dogs and find out something like this!
You should really think about joining the Face Book Group Taurine-Deficiency Dilated Cardiomyopathy group. If you don’t have a FB account, you can set one up using your dog’s name or something besides your own name if you are concerned about privacy. It does not have to be a public account. The FB group is closed and private as well. It has a lot of information posted and vets actively participating. Including the cardiologist who is heading up the research.
Basically try to choose a brand that has been established for a long time and continues to do testing and research on their foods. They should also employ at least one veterinary nutritionist.
There was no mention of recommending the rotation of foods to be valuable by any of the vets or admins in the group. There are some people who like to do this and their dogs do well with it. If you are rotating between brands and foods that have suspect ingredients or are not truly complete and balanced, then there still could be issues.
Pick a food that does not have any legumes or potatoes in the first five ingredients is what either the FDA or UC Davis is recommending.
If you can’t stand the thought of feeding a food made by Mars, Purina or Hills, then Annamaet might be a good option for you. They’ve had good results on the data chart. Also, I see Farmina is doing well on the data table as well. But, I’m not sure they fulfill the other requirements suggested by the group. (I’m switching to Purina) Good luck!
