Isn't your dog worth it?

Like most pet owners, I want to feed Sally food that is good for her. She's a big girl, about 80 lbs., so I buy "large breed" food. Originally, I fed her some large breed puppy food that I found at what Mr W and I call "the dog food store", or Petsmart.

I guess I'm a victim of marketing, but I was in the mindset that I'd be unable to find quality dog food at Target or the grocery store. I settled on a large breed kind made by Nutromax, and Sally liked it fine. Then I went to the dog food store once and they were out.

Out? Yes, 'it's our most popular brand'. Could you check in the back? Come back Wednesday. I had enough of her old food to tide me over, and went back to the store like a dutiful consumer. I didn't want to switch food on her, as it can give her the runs. She went through that bag, I went to buy more and guess what? Yup, they were out. So I bought a bag of Iams. I gradually mixed more and more Iams large breed food in with her old food and she did just fine.

It's funny. In this day of (I'm not kidding) holistic, organic dog food, there has been some goalpost-moving as to what is touted as the best food for a dog. Iams isn't considered a premium dog food anymore. Is it time to remind everyone that organic food hasn't been shown to be more nutritious? Sure, buy it for the lack of pesticides, but this sense that one is doing the very best for their pet if they feed organic food rings a little hollow with me.

To get some info, I went to the American Veterinary Medical Association's website. Search for dog food recommendations and you will find none. Food recall information from a year or so ago, yes. This says to me that it doesn't matter all that much what brand one picks, as long as it says it's nutritionally complete. So for the time being I will continue to buy Iams because I don't have to make a special trip to get it.

To be fair, I did recently buy rawhide specifically not made in China. I went on the web and found stuff made in the US, due to the general feeling that regulations are rather lax over there.