There are ingredients put into dog food to enhance the flavor and taste and those things can be addicting and make it hard for owners to change their pet’s food. If you ever pick up an issue of Pet Food Industry magazine, you might be surprised to see all the products and chemicals and mixtures advertised to enhance taste in a dog food. I foster dogs so they never get a transition whatsoever and I can tell you, they do just fine after the usual transition period. Some might not eat for a day or two, nearly three and I might need to mix in some canned food, but then they get over it and eat like every one else. You might just take longer to change her food out, even if it takes over a month or two. Feed 90/10 for at least a week and until she has no problem with it, then 80/20, 70/30, etc. You might even start with a 3 or 4 star food and work your way up to 5 stars foods or even feed a rotation of 4 and 5 star foods. I took my dogs off Beneful (that has corn and sugar and propylene glycol and probably tastes great and made by Purina) and won’t look back even if they loved it and scarfed it down and would choose it in a bowl to bowl taste test just like I would not rely on a bowl of cereal even if it were 100% complete and balanced for every meal of my life. For the Pro Plan, in the long run, I would be worried about the effects of the corn products being that 95% of corn is now a GMO and so is some wheat. GMO’s fed to test animals cause health problems and believe me, there haven’t been any human trials or research to their long term affects on our health. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6OxbpLwEjQ Then, I just don’t prefer companies that use feeding trials.
“The protocol requires six of eight animals complete a 26-week feeding trial without showing clinical or pathological signs of nutritional deficiency or excess. The cats’ or dogs’ general health is evaluated by a veterinarian before and after the test. Four blood values (hemoglobin, packed cell volume, serum alkaline phosphatase and serum albumin) are measured after the trial, and the average values of the test subjects must meet minimum levels. No animal is allowed to lose more than 15% of its starting weight” from wikipedia.
25% of test subjects can be taken out of the test for any reason including illness and not be reported in the final outcome and the food can still pass!
Then I would worry about problems arising from being fed gluten every meal of her life http://dogtorj.com/what-is-food-intolerance/gluten-intolerance/ and getting menadione. Not to mention there’s 4 grain ingredients in front of the poultry by-product meal.
There are just so many other foods out there that do offer you more for the money. Nutrisource and Dr Tim’s and Victor are a few.
