What to feed my puppy is a question that is nearly as personal as the  choice of the pup itself. There are nearly as many different brands of food as there are dogs. We feed NUTRO NATURAL CHOICE LARGE BREED ADULT AND PUPPY.  We feed it because Our dogs like it and because it is high in protein and  properly formulated. We feel a dog food should not necessarily be the most expensive, but should have the following things: a guarantee from the  manufacturer; an 800 number to call for questions and complaints, a nutritional adequacy statement, essential vitamins and minerals. We do not like animal byproducts or ground yellow corn and synthetic preseratives.

All dog foods  have a guaranteed analysis printed on the bag. To ascertain the real protein content of your dog food you subtract out the moisture content and multiply that remaining per centage  by the protein content.. For example a dog food with 10% moisture and  26.00% crude protein content has (100% -10% moisture content =90% x 26.00 protein content ) 23.4% crude protein.We think the higher the protein content the better but generally anything over 20% is acceptable to us

You also need to be careful when you look at the ingredients. Sometimes the same ingredient is listed in different forms for example you may see ground corn and corn meal or other forms of ingredients which are listed to reduce their prevalence or for other reasons.You want to avoid materials that are hard for your dog to digest but which serve as filler. You want to avoid a lot of preservatives.

Fortunately,with a formulated dog food your puppy or dog should be getting everything he needs for good healthy growth and maintenance without additional supplements  With puppies you don't need to add anything and when you do, it can alter the formula. Check with your vet and see what he recommends. With adult dogs, giving them extras won't affect their growth rate and will make you feel good.

We do not feed table scraps although it is hard to resist begging( and once in a while it doesn't seem to upset the dog's digestion.)We do not  feed raw products, i.e  chicken backs, eggs and the like. We are concerned with the presence of bacteria and infection from these raw products, although many people do do it with sucess.

When it is hot or a bitch is in season or for other reasons, your dog may not eat as much or even eat at all for a while. Check with your vet to see what you can do. Sometimes we mix our dry dog food with a can of nutro canned to help them to eat but as a general rule we keep our tribe on hard dry dog food for dental health reasons.

The long and the short of it is There is not a lot of difference between the many dog foods of high protein and guranteed formula. Brand loyalty may not be as important as price and most importantly taste. It really does not matter what a dog food cost or who made it as long as it is good for your dog and he likes the way it tastes.