Kibbles

[flit]

Because I needed something new to keep me up late, I just stumbled across a link to yet another Nutro recall; this one over bad mineral content in cat food. But what's interesting is a lot of people have been having trouble with the brand *on dogs* since 2007, when it was bought by Mars Corp. They very quickly changed the formula and there are a

Comments

[anonymous]

Hmm - tough problem. I think you're right that most dog food manufacturers just aren't going to be that careful about it. If gluten sensitivity in dogs were more common they might be better about it.

A couple of thoughts, which may or may not be that helpful. One is that raw food is almost certainly not a good option. It's really hard to create a nutritional mix of raw food that has everything dogs need in it - there were lots of horror stories after the dog food scare of people making their dogs sick doing this. And to do it right, it would be a lot of work to get all the essential ingredients in there, all the time.

If you could find one that's "more or less", maybe you could wear gloves when feeding them? Would that reduce the difficulty (especially if you knew it was fairly safe)? I'm thinking of like those kitchen gloves people used to wear when washing dishes (big long ones that go up your arms). Or use a long-handled scoop and make Brad wash the bowls :)

Some sort of thoughts early in the morning... good luck! - Teresa

[flit]

I don't have dermititis herpetiformis, the skin-disease form of celiac, so I'm not too worried about skin contact. (Maybe mildly worried about contact with an open wound; that might form antigens.) So I will handle it with bare hands and then just scrub them thoroughly afterwards. That's a bit easier than wrangling gloves on.

Re: raw food, you can get raw food "kits" that have been tried and are nutritionally balanced for dogs. But they're still a major pain to deal with, because they use limited fridge/freezer space, need to be defrosted, etc. They also cost a *lot*.