Who said to stay away from puppy food? In quality dog foods, its really not necessary to have specific formulas per age... That said though, in grain free foods (like TOTW) the calcium is typically too high for a growing large breed pup. But otherwise, a quality food is appropriate for all life stages (barring specific medical concerns.) So I wonder if this was just what they meant?
Blue Buffalo is a good food. IAMS isn't, and if I'm remembering correctly I don't like bil jac except for their frozen food. There are quite a few wellness formulas, so I can see how you got confused!! This would be good
Wellness Complete Health® Super5Mix® Large Breed - Puppy Health
And I don't like royal canin. I think its overpriced for mediocre quality. With good foods though like Wellness, you may get a bit of sticker shock. But when you're feeding a nutritionally dense food you feed much smaller amounts. Cheaper foods are full of fillers and lower caloric content, requiring much larger amounts to be fed. So if food A costs twice as much as food B, but food A only requires half as much fed daily you aren't paying more!
And I mentioned in your other thread how you will save on vet bills. Many people are lucky and feed junk and the pet lives to be 15 years old on it. But then you get the pet with EPI, food allergies, or food intolerances... And you spend hundreds of dollars or even thousands of dollars in medical tests and various things to try... Only to figure out the problem was the food. I lost one of my cats due to food intolerances. I did the spending hundreds on tests and trying various prescription medications. Then I found out about nutrition, and she became a different cat. Unfortunately she passed away from heart failure a few more years down the line, and we are positive the extreme rapid weight loss from when she was sick damaged her heart. I had another cat with severe food allergies, when I adopted her she looked like ****. She was having chronic URIs and broke out in scabby hives all over her body. Once she was on the quality food and I identified which proteins she was allergic to, she became a different cat. And then there is my dog Tessa. She has autoimmune dry eye, and certain ingredients in foods irritate her eyes and increase the eye boogers. Which is annoying with any dog, but mix it with the lack of tears to wash excess mucous out and it collects and dries, can glue her eyes shut, etc. Emma needs digestive enzymes to help her digest her food, and if I feed her lower quality food her weight drops and she gets intermittent diarrhea again. My stepdads cat needed a $500 surgery due to feeding low quality food. They linked the ingredients in the food to causing a urinary blockage. Some people are lucky, others aren't!
