Caring for a Three Legged Dog or Cat
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I'm not sure that grains are the evil boogy man they are be made out to be. Sure they are fillers, but how many millions of pets have been fed grain based kibble for decades? Generally obese dogs are a more common occurrence.... and whatever evil grain can be accused of simply porking up fido do to treats/lack of excercise is worse than any grain filler.
I'm sure most of it is the attitude of the owners.. nothing is good enough for my pet etc etc etc that has seen a rise in raw food/cooked diets. I've had dogs all my life and in my immediate family there are no less than 10 dogs between us (not counting friends). No one uses raw food, there is a mix of low end grain kibble (Kibble and Bits might as well be called a plant), above average 4Health, and high end $50+ 20lbs stuff, and wet foods. If you can pick out which dog is on what food then you have a gift that should be on t.v.... the dog food whisperer!
As for the 'dogfoodadvisor' web sites none of their ratings are based on anything scientific. They read the label and make assumptions. Many of the reviews are out of date.. and one in particular (4Health Grain Free) is just plain wrong because they never did any research other than reading the bag. I guess they can claim they are using the 'available' information but that is the lazy way out. If you are claiming to be an authority and rating pet foods you need to be a lot more thorough than 'well, it wasn't on the bag'. Its on OK site, but its far from the final word on dog nutrition.
Sorry I havent' been on the site in a while...for some reason I can't get on it at home on my new computer...so have to do it at work when I can! 
Definitely no vaccines for a cancer dog. You can get rabies waivers from your holistic vet. Would your groomer take a titer? I would assume that would be proof enough that your dog has had enough vaccines I'm sure for it's entire life.(and all of our dogs).
http://www.rabi.....efund.org/
As far as not wanting to feed raw...have you looked at premixes such as Honest Kitchen? Most of them(except Preference) are complete and have dehydrated meat in them. With Preference you add meat but you could cook the meat and not feed raw. They have several that are low carb/grain free .(Embark and Love for examples).
http://www.theh.....tchen.com/
Also, I am using Urban Wolf premix on Maggie as not only does she have cancer but now she is battling kidney disease. The company is great to deal with and their food is adjusted by adding different oils and increased veggie's to keep the phosphorus down for kidney dogs. But I have also used it prior to Maggie getting diagnosed with CRF(just don't add extra veggies).
Tracy, Maggie's Mom
Maggie was amputated for soft tissue sarcoma 10-20-09
Maggie lost her battle with kidney disease on 8-24-13
Thanks for the links, but I am just not on the raw food bandwagon.
If you think about it 'dehydrated raw food' is kibble 
You can always add raw to kibble, and I do throw in an egg every other day and also daily 4 squirts of salmon oil (Grizzly) but there are still to many 'additional supplements' that you HAVE to add to make raw food nutritious.
I think we all just try to do the best we can for our pets and since the menu foods scare (was that like 5 years ago?) I got much more informed on the ingredients in the food I chose. I used the pet food advisor site mentioned earlier and went with Merrick brand dog food. My fur kids love it and clean their bowl every feeding. We give fish oil supplements and yogurt for probiotics and are very careful to give only healthy (no preservative) treats. We tried different diets before going with Merrick and found out quickly that Atlas has a beef allergy and cannot eat a grain free
food. boy was that a messy experience! (worth noting that Atlas's doctors were involved along the whole process and to this day they put BEEF allergy in huge bold letters on all his charts). A great Dane with diarrhea is to be avoided at all costs LOL!
Everyone has different needs and different life styles that they must work within so I don't judge or claim one thing to be better than another but I do know that knowledge is power and on a whole we are getting much more knowledgable about many aspects of our pets lives. That can only be a good thing.
Pat & Mighty Atlas
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