Nutro Grain Free

[cta]

i just ran out to get food for the dog. he's been on royal canin hypoallergenic food for the past month and has been doing great on it. his skin has cleared up...before that food he was on BB and was always itching and had scabs all over his body. anyway...i picked up the smallest bag of Nutro Grain Free venison&potato. much to my dismay and totally my fault for not looking into it more, i came here to browse through the food threads and saw that there have been a lot of alarming issues involving Nutro. my question is, has anything changed or is it still an "unreliable" food? obviously it still makes me nervous knowing the history of it, but i'm just wondering if people still wouldn't recommend it. i mainly picked it because it has the same base ingredients (venison and potato) as the RC and i don't want his skin to flare up again. any thoughts? thanks in advance.

[chelle]

I've read the comments with great concern myself. Unfortunately, I read them *after* I switched my oldest dog to this food.

All I can say is this food has helped my dog immensely. Due to the negativity and the recalls, I think I'll switch to another grain free, limited ingredient venison, though once the bag is gone.

[cta]

yeah i'm in that boat too...i mean, i literally gave him a cup of it, so he's not "on" it yet...i will continue my reading and research. i would keep him on the RC, but $70 every two weeks seems a bit excessive!

[shets114]

Should be called Potato and Venison.

[Emoore]

Why not stick with the RC if it's working well?

[cta]

the RC is by prescription to the tune of $70 every 2 weeks. i said this when i first learned about his allergies, but i'm really considering putting him on a raw diet.

[GatorDog]

I personally tried the Nutro Grain free Venison formula with Aiden when it first came out, and by the third day he had liquid, projectile diarrhea. He has always had horrible tummy issues with all foods, even raw. He couldn't tolerate raw for some reason, and I put months and months worth of research into starting and transitioning and it just resulted in him vomiting on a day to day basis. I'd wait a few weeks to introduce a new meat and it just ended in another bout of projectile poo. Now he's back onto kibble. He's a horribly picky eater (which is where raw food came in handy-he loved it!). I started with Natural Balance and have started adding in some Acana to entice him to eat. He enjoys the taste of the Acana a whole lot, but to eat it alone was too rich for him. The limited ingredient diet is working really well so far, though. And in my area, a 28lb bag only ranges from $45-$55, so its not bad at all in comparison to prescription diets or raw. They also manufacture a venison formula that I plan on using in my rotation with Aiden in a few months.

**** Van Patten's Natural Balance Allergy Formulas for Dogs

Good luck! I know how big of a pain food issues can be!

[ChancetheGSD]

I wouldn't feed anything made by Nutro to a starving dog on the street. :/ I had a bad experience with Nutro and simply can't trust a company like that anymore. (especially one that doesn't take care of their customers when THEY mess up)

If you need a LID venison food then try either California Natural or even Natural Balance would be a better option than Nutro. California Natural tends to be the cheapest. Or if you want to stick to RC, I saw they have that food on PetFoodDirect.com and it's currently on sale for $32 a bag plus they offer a lot of 15% off coupons all the time.

[cta]

thank you for all the suggestions. right after i read all the threads from a few years ago about nutro i was like oh totally a bad idea. today i thought to look on petfooddirect...don't know why i didn't think of it before..duh. gator, i will also look into your suggestion. and you're right...these allergy issues are difficult. although i was lucky he did well on the RC right off the bat, so if i can find it cheaper than i get it for now, i will keep him on it. i'm so scared if i switch him to raw that i will fudge it up or it will wreak havoc on his stomach. mehhhh...these darn dogs...nothing is ever simple with them!

[GatorDog]

I used to work in a pet store before starting vet tech and I always used to tell customers not to fix what isn't broken. Growing up, my dogs were raise on crap quality stuff and lived pretty long lives. Sometimes some dogs do good on something that isn't considered "good". If whatever you've got is working, I'd have half a mind to stick to it.