Vet tech here. The truth in my experience is that there are really no bad dog or cat foods that will harm your pet. However, every pet - even from the same litter - is different and may respond differently to certain ingredients.
For dogs it's not a terrible idea to have an allergy test done to find out specifically what could be an issue. This will save you money in the long run (costs $200-300) in vet bills if your animal gets sick or has a reaction.
What we tell our clients regarding wet or dry food is to pick one and stick with it. That's it. Find a food you can afford; that the animal will eat; and that doesn't result in an unhappy or sick pet. But only pick one. It's a waste of money and unnecessary calories to do both.
Additionally, don't buy or give them treats from a bag. They're a massive waste of money and can only lead to behavior issues.
If you want to give them a treat between meals (3 for puppies during the first two years; 2 for senior dogs) give them fruits or veggies that you would eat. Eg: baby carrots; peeled apple slices; fresh or steamed green beans. There's very few of these that dogs can't handle or digest (grape skins being one so no grapes or raisins). They won't love or go for everything but test them out and see what they like. All dogs seem to enjoy bananas.
The biggest disservice that you can do to yourself or your animal is to feed it leftovers off the table. Yes, it makes you feel better about yourself because you think you're making your pet happy. But your dog is stupid. It's a stupid animal that literally trusts you as its owner with its life. Anything fried or fatty or foods that you would eat can lead to obesity, pancreatitis, hyperthyroidism, diabetes, or worst of all - massively-explosive-a-river-runs-through-it levels of diarrhea.
Owner negligence is by far the number one thing that makes vets stay in business. People claim to love their pets but refuse to listen about what to feed them. I've largely given up at this point. I give the spiel and then turn it over to the doctor.
I personally like Royal Canin food for dogs. But again, and I can't stress this enough, every animal is different. Find what works for you and stick with it. Do not switch foods on a whim or because "let's try something else, won't that he fun for us?". No, it will not. A food trial is a minimum of six weeks. So that's a month and a half of making sure the animal eats the food (and only the new food!) and doesn't have a reaction of some kind to it.
Switching brands during or after does nothing and will only harm a dog if it's had GI difficulties in the past or broken out with a rash.
If you want to switch foods for whatever reason do so over the course of a month by slowly integrating it with the old food 1/4 cup at a time every few days. Senior dogs shouldn't eat more than 2 or 3 cups of food day. So that's 1-1.5 in the morning and the same at night. That's it. The dog will likely be hungry between these meals and it should be. That's how you train them to listen to you. That's where the fruit and vegetables come in as treats between meals. By year three their metabolism absolutely plummets. So this is how you keep a healthy animal for the longest amount of time possible.
This is much more than I expected to type here but I'll finish by mentioning that there's only one brand of dog food I absolutely stay away from, and not because it's not a really good dog food now, but out of principal: Blue Buffalo.
Blue Buffalo was a family run company (now owned by General Mills) that was started by a former Park Ave. advertising executive, Bill Bishop. This guy took his boardroom knowledge of the business and used his marketing experience to seize an opportunity to exploit the lack of regulation on dog foods in this country. He and his family made that the basis of which they started their dog food company. Think about how many times over the years you've seen tv spots for Blue Buffalo. You can Google their lawsuits for the specifics but what it basically boiled down to is they mislabeled their bags of food for years, charging premium prices for what amounted to being no different than anyone else.
That wouldn't be more than simple fraud if not for the hundreds of animals this impacted and definitely killed because of their greed. They settled a few of the suits and then got out of the business a few years later by selling to GM for billions.
It's really the American dream if you think about it.
Anyway, Blue has been clean for years now and is a good expensive option, but I still don't like or recommend them simply because there are so many others who do things right, why go with a brand that did so wrong and largely got away with it?
