[Allison C]

Long time lurker, but joined this forum to address tons of questions that I used to bother Petco employees with and never got a definitive answer to.

I have two senior toy poodles, one (9lb) with medium activity level, the other one (smaller, 6lb) with little to none activity level. Suffice to say I try to get as much exercise for them as possible but the smaller one is just way too stubborn and lazy–let’s save that topic for another day.

We were on Wellness Core Original for some 10 years or so. Now I’m looking to jump ship because I figured the dogs could use a variety in their food life and also I came to believe that limited ingredient diet is better for my aging dogs. Right now we’re on Canidae Pure Salmon but I don’t know if the dogs like it as much as they did Wellness.

In my search for dog food I tried to look at those with protein % of 30 or more but it’s not easy to reconcile that with the limited ingredient factor.

But I recently heard/read somewhere that high protein food isn’t good/effective for inactive dogs. Because if that’s true, I can just feed my dogs Wellness Simple, which comes with relatively low protein %. Is it true that high protein can be bad?

[TheNaturalDog]

It’s not so much that high protein is “bad”. Dogs get most of their energy from proteins. If they are not active, they don’t burn off that energy and tend to put on a lot of weight. If your dogs are doing fine on a food with 30% protein, then I would stick with that. There isn’t really a need to go to a low protein food unless they put on weight from inactivity.

[Pitlove]

Allison- Senior dogs have an increased requirement for protein as they do not metabolize it as well as their adult counterparts. Is Petco the only place available for you to shop or do you have a small up-scale pet store near you or can you shop online? If so, I’d look at Orijen Senior. It’s argued as the best Senior kibble on the market, but you will not find it at Petco or PetSmart.

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