Have I become a dog food snob?

So we've had S for just over a month now and she has caused us to look at pet foods in a way I never thought I would. Now for me, personally, it's a trust thing and I am saddened by the level of lieing done to sell dog food(or anything really) that is done now. But let me start at the beginning - and yes this really is going to be a long boring post about dog food.

When we first go S just over a month ago we were told by the shelter lady that she was eating Old Roy Puppy food. The shelter lady said "It's really not a good food, switch her as soon as you can.". At that point J did what we had always done with Old Dog - he picked up a bag of what he thought was good food from the grocery store. We switched her and she seemed to be doing fine.

When Susie was 7 weeks old(just a week after we got her) M messed with her food and water and S stopped eating. I was very concerned and took her to the vet. While I was at the vet she seemed very unimpressed with our grocery store food and said "You should get her on a large puppy food." she then rattled off the usual higher end brands that I had heard of(Iams, Science Diet, Eukanuba). When I told J about what the vet had said he did some research of his own and found out some very interesting things about dog foods and what things were good to have in them and what things were not so good to have in them. We then did some online label comparisons and settled on Royal Canin Large Puppy as our wonderful new food and switched S to that. I felt good about our choice and we also switched the cat to better food.

This morning as I was looking over a few things on the new forum I just joined(a dog forum) I decided to look at their food and nutrition section and see if any of them were feeding RC as well. A post in one of the threads had a link to a Dog Food Analysis site that compared and graded all sorts of different foods. I found out there that our great food only got a 2 out of 6 in their rating system(1 being the bottom of the barrel). I looked some more and e-mail J with links and asked him if we should reconsider our feeding choice, again.

J surprised me by bringing home a new dog food, a full 6 out of 6 from the listing and we are once again in the process of switching foods on S. Now I don't really want to become a dog food snob and the new food isn't any more expensive than the old food...in fact it's a tiny bit cheaper. All I want to say is if you have a dog and are wondering where your food stands you should consider looking into switching - it doesn't always end up costing more in the long run because better food doesn't have to be fed in as large a quantity. I would also suggest buying from a store that pretty much only sells pet foods(so not PetSmart or your local department/grocery store) as they will have a higher end variety than anywhere else(Pet Valu and Global Pet Foods in Canada are good choices).

Of course everyone makes their own choices for their pets and their kids, you don't have to do things the way I do. I'm just sayin'

Cass :)