Numbercrunching: Kibble with the Lowest Fat, Lowest Calories, and Best Value

 What is the lowest fat, lowest calorie dog food currently on the market?

Sisci Godzilla has pancreatitis. Not the acute hospitalization kind, and not even the kind where she needs to be on prescription food. It's more like a chronic tummy sensitivity. This started a few years ago with very occasional but severe episodes of vomiting. She would puke and puke until the only thing coming up was bloody foam. I would rush her to the vet and they would give her a shot or a pill of Cerenia, an anti-nausea medication. Maybe a short course of famotidine or sucralfate to help her feel better. She would be fine for a long time, six months or a year, before it happened again. It didn't seem to be correlated with feeding her anything in particular.

A couple of months ago, Sis had three vomiting episodes in one week. When I took her to the vet, I asked for bloodwork. I was worried about her kidneys and liver, but it turns out her pancreas levels were high. Not super high, just elevated. Not bad enough for acute treatment or a prescription diet. She was put on omeprazole and given more Cerenia for the nausea, and a diagnosis of irritable bowel syndrome as well. 

Prescription diets for pancreatitis have very low fat, around 5% for products like Purina's EN. Sis had been eating Diamond Adult Maintenance kibble with 12%, and I decided to look at food options with lower fat to help keep her body comfortable and hopefully settle her stomach. Calorie count was also a consideration here, as she gets fat on air like many cattledogs. With these factors in mind, I started collecting data on dog foods. I stuck with formulas marketed for weight management to help narrow the search. I started with the values for Diamond Maintenance and excluded any foods with a higher fat percentage.

Product	cal/cup	%fat	$/lb
Diamond Maintenance	360	12%	$0.94
Victor Purpose	360	11.50%	$1.68
Wellness Healthy Weight	405	10%	$2.70
Eukanuba Fit	267	9%	$3.22
Royal Canin Weight Care	256	9%	$3.67
ProPlan Weight Management	330	9%	$2.12
Blue Buffalo Healthy Weight	324	9%	$2.03
Science Diet Perfect Weight	299	9%	$3.44
Iams Healthy Weight	304	9%	$1.61
American Journey Healthy Weight	299	9%	$1.77
Merrick Healthy Weight	355	9%	$2.92
Purina One Healthy Weight	320	8%	$1.37
Beneful Healthy Weight	341	8%	$1.13
True Acre Foods Healthy Weight	269	8%	$1.43
Natural Balance Fat Dogs	315	7.50%	$2.47
Pedigree Healthy Weight	280	7%	$1.21
Nutro Healthy Weight	231	7%	$2.50
Solid Gold Fit	330	6.50%	$3.05
Diamond Care Grain-Free	304	6%	$2.12
Diamond Naturals Weight	310	6%	$1.39
Kirkland Signature Healthy Weight Formula	275	6%	$0.83
Science Diet Light	271	5.50%	$2.64

Here is what I came up with. First, there is a huge range of different calorie content for different "weight management" dog foods. Wellness Healthy Weight offers 405 calories per cup, while Nutro Healthy Weight only has 231 calories per cup. That's a difference of 174 calories and means a dog can eat significantly more of the Nutro food while consuming the same amount of calories. That's something to remember when putting a dog on a diet. I could add a cup of green beans, or I could just feed more of a lower calorie food.

Next, there is a wide range of fat values in food marketed for weight management, with 9% the most common. There isn't an official feed definition of "weight management" food the way there is for puppy food, or adult food, or all life stages food, or large breed puppy food. Dogs use fat for energy, so for my active working dogs I look for higher fat. Most dogs don't need an incredibly low fat diet, and too little fat in their diet can leave them tired with a poor coat. Anecdotally have known people feeding vegan dog food that struggled with energy level and poor muscle tone in their dogs. While many people would be quick to blame the vegan food, I would more readily cite the 8-10% fat levels in commercially available vegan dog foods. But some dogs can benefit tremendously from a low fat diet, particularly for things like pancreatitis.

So what food gives me the most bang for my buck in terms of low fat and low calories? A number of pancreatitis prone dogs eat Science Diet Light (not Science Diet Perfect Weight) as it has the lowest fat content and calories per cup on the lower end of the range. I was about to order a bag, but needed to make a Costco run and decided to check out their house brand Kirkland Signature food just to grab another data point. I was pleasantly surprised to find a similar nutrition profile, at a much lower cost. So that is what Sis is now eating, and so far it seems to be helping. At least, she hasn't had any more uncontrollable vomiting episodes since the food switch.

First Impressions of Scentwork

I have been wanting to get into scentwork for years. I took a couple of private lessons a decade ago, but couldn't continue for various reasons. I have been actively attempting to get into a scentwork class either in person or online for the past two years with no success. I now own a book on getting myself started and am working through it, but I'm not really enjoying the process and so far I am massively underwhelmed by this sport. Here are my impressions of scentwork as a completely inexperienced outsider attempting to get into the sport:

Patiently waiting to be released to eat treats off the floor.

1. We don't want newbies. Scentwork as a whole is trying to keep new people out. This seems weird at first, both online and in person training programs for scentwork are everywhere. My local kennel club has half a dozen different classes every session. There are clinics and seminars everywhere all the time. BUT, the prerequisite for all of these things is to have taken the intro beginner class. The beginner class is only offered once a year. The class at my local kennel club only has space for six dogs and has filled up in under 15 seconds one year and under 26 seconds the other year I tried to get in. I know this because that's how long it took me to fill in my information and hit the submit button when registration opened. So I started looking for an online class and found a great website for a great trainer with all sorts of online classes. BUT, she only offers her intro class once a year and it was last month so tough luck. This is proudly announced both at the kennel club and with this online trainer, they are very open about how few people they introduce the sport each year.

2. Odor is a sidequest. Scentwork is mostly just sniffing around for treats. My outsider impression is that scentwork is almost entirely about finding food. I had originally believed it was modeled after narcotics detection rather than foraging around on the floor for crumbs. A friend who managed to make it into the kennel club class reported that after a year of classes they were still hunting for food with no plans to look for anything else. My book teaches searching behavior entirely with food and says you don't ever need to teach them to look for anything else unless you want to compete. Another training website I looked at had a bunch of different exercises and said they could all be done with food and even if the dog can search for a specific odor they should mostly still be searching for food.

3. There is surprisingly little sniffing involved. I am working my way through the book with Sisci right now, and three weeks into it the "searches" consist entirely of scattering food on the ground around various objects. The dog is supposed to learn to carefully sniff around the object to find the treats, but Sis just cannonballs over and slurps them all up as if the object isn't even there. She can clear the room in seconds even when there are several objects to be searched. We can use up her entire daily ration of kibble in five minutes of "searching" and it takes less time than if I just threw it out on the lawn. I'm probably doing something wrong here, but so far I'm not seeing the fascinating searching behavior and puzzle-solving that I keep hearing about from scentwork fans. Maybe at some point the book will instruct me to start hiding the treats instead of just scattering them on the ground around boxes and bags. But then, having had multiple completely food-obsessed dogs in the past, I'm also not entirely comfortable encouraging my dog to forage everywhere for potential food. 

So there's the current state of our scentwork journey. I am throwing treats on the floor for my dog to eat while ruminating on why the sport doesn't want new people to get involved and wondering how this is even a sport in the first place. I am currently looking for an online class or program that isn't entirely about searching for food in the hopes that eventually I will discover why so many people like scentwork. Feel free to set me straight in the comments if your opinion differs.

My Dog is Always Wet

 This is Puff. Puff likes water. We live on a farm. There is lots of water on the farm. There are stock tanks and water tubs all over the place. There is also a pond. It rains a lot, so there are also puddles. Lots of puddles. Puff loves puddles. 

When we lived in the desert, rain wasn't a thing most of the year. There wasn't ambient water just laying around. Puff would jump in stocks tanks and water tubs, and then dry off very quickly in the single-digit humidity. Now she is perpetually wet. This has caused some unexpected issues. The first is her collar. 

Obviously biothane was the obvious choice for Puff's collar. It's waterproof,  non-permeable, doesn't soak up nasty swamp water, and lasts forever, right? I usually see it touted as an analog to leather for dog gear and horse tack, and I have leather tack that's older than I am. In practice, I keep seeing people say that a couple of years is a good lifespan for a biothane collar. However, a lot of websites that sell biothane collars say they will last a lifetime with proper care. The biothane collars I have on my sheep tend to get stiff after a while, but that probably doesn't count as proper biothane care. 

Puff has been wearing a Farm Diggity Farm-Proof collar for three years, and it has been wet for three
years. The biothane material itself is still going strong, but the rivets are rusting out. This is not a dig at Farm Diggity, almost all my dogs are wearing their collars and they are incredible. I also have several of their dog tie-outs and some farm-proof crooks. I have nothing but good things to say about the company and their products. But farm-proof is apparently not Puff-proof.

I could just replace the rivets and wait for them to rust out again, but I am also exploring other collar options for the perpetually damp dog. Maybe stitched biothane from a company that makes horse tack. Maybe I'll have a go at making my own biothane collars. Maybe I'll have Puff DNA tested to see if she's all dog and not part seal or otter. (Just kidding, the DNA test said 100% border collie without any fun surprises.)

The Changing Landscape of Dog Products

 Since I started this blog almost a decade ago (it will be a decade this March) the world of dog products has changed dramatically. There used to be a relative handful of companies and makers, making distinctive products. I purchased many of the products featured on this blog in secondhand stores, but they generally came from identifiable companies with an online presence that I could link to. Often those companies had their own stories, and I have loved researching them as I go along, finding out who merged with who and which products they kept in the lineup (spoiler alert: Outward Hound buys everything) post acquisition. 

When I started this blog, there were two manufacturers of inflatable donut cones. Today there are dozens of different products available from dozens of different manufacturers. There was one recovery suit, and it was not available for sale but had to be purchased from a veterinarian. Today you can find hundreds of different products in all sorts of designs. They are easier to find, less expensive, and becoming more common and popular because they get shared a lot through word of mouth. 

As the products become more commonplace and widespread, the companies behind them are all sort of blurring together. In writing up my recent posts on dog pants and recovery collars, I found that several of the products I had purchased or screenshotted were no longer available on Amazon. In fact, some of the companies were nowhere to be found. The current trend I am seeing is lots of similar or identical products offered from various different companies, with a slightly different brand logo or no logo at all. Obviously they are all coming from the same overseas manufacturers. 

Imported products are nothing new. What has changed is the quality of some of those products. Our familiar and beloved manufacturers like Ruffwear and Lupine and Hurtta haven't gone anywhere, and nobody matches their quality and customer service. But there used to be those guys, and the affordable pet store stuff, and then stuff from unfamiliar overseas manufacturers. That stuff was reliably poor quality. I know most of the dog products I buy from familiar and well-established brands are also manufactured overseas, but those had the security of being from a familiar company with a reputation to uphold. 

Today, I can buy a recovery suit, cone, collar, leash, bowl, toy, etc from an unfamiliar foreign brand on Amazon and be relatively certain it will hold up at least as well as the affordable pet store option. My no-name dog pajamas do not have a familiar company standing behind them, and they don't have the design consideration or quality found in my Medical Pet Shirt. I may not be able to find that company or product again when I want to share it with a friend or write about it here, but there will be ten more just like it waiting for me. Maybe even more, in even more different styles.

So what am I paying for when I buy a RuffWear Front Range harness instead of a RabbitGoo harness from Amazon or  a no-name harness from Temu? I am not only paying for quality and customer service. I am also paying for innovation. Companies like RuffWear are the ones creating not only new products, but new kinds of products. We didn't have mass marketed, high-quality escape-proof harnesses or structured, padded walking harnesses until RuffWear showed us how great they are. Everyone else is copying.