Wellness is a rich food. My dog didn't do well on it either. She had chronic loose stools the entire time she was on it. I've used quite a few of the better quality foods, and I now feed Premium Edge. I like it. Her stools are firm and formed, and she usually only drops one terd, as opposed to making a pile.

It really does all depend on the dog, but as a general rule, stay away from any food you can buy in Wal-Mart, K-Mart, and the grocery store and you should be okay. Look for foods that don't contain corn or by products, and that don't contain chemical preservatives like BHA and BHT, or propyl gallate. Look for foods that have a protein source as the first ingredient, but be careful; many times the ingredient list will look something like this:

Lamb, ground brown rice, white rice, brewer's rice, chicken meal.....

Look closely at the first five ingredients. If three or more of those ingredients are a form of grain (like above), then the food actually contains more grain than meat, even though meat is listed as the first ingredient. By volume, the above food contains twice as much rice as lamb.

Another good brands I didn't see listed here and that I have had good luck with is Bil Jac http://www.biljac.com Solid Gold (they now have a Buffalo and Salmon flavor called Wolfcub(puppy) and Wolfking (adult) http://www.solidgoldhealth.com and Natural Balance-lots different kinds including a New RAW Formula and a Venison formula http://www.naturalbalanceinc.com/. Nutro is good but my GSD got very tired of it after a while. The only way I could get him to eat it was to mix it with Chicken Soup for the Dog Lovers Soul and another dog food with the relatively same ingredients. I NEVER had any problems mixing and switching foods.

I'm sure glad that someelse is expeirincing the same thing. I am feeding a 8 week old rott and I was more than concerned about why his stool was still so loose. I changed to this so called good dog food for him and his stool got worse. I started to think about a raw diet but am wondering how much this is going to cost. Not to mention the time commitment. Can any one offer any insight on this for me.

Melvin

Melvin,
There should be another discussion on the Raw Diet.
I feed Sensible Choice adult Lamb and Rice. Ando is doing good on it. I may switch to Chicken Soup for the pet lover's soul. I like all the ingrediences in it...it's almost a raw diet, just in pebble form.
But, not sure, the saying goes, don't fix something that doesn't need fixing.

If you can find good deals on raw, it's much cheaper then a high quality kibble.

A comment on the Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover's Soul. I fed it to some of my rescue dogs for a while, and they did terrible on it. They all lost the gleam in their coat, and lost weight. It's an icky food, in my experience. I was surprised because the ingredient panel looks good, but at least with my dogs it didn't work at all.

I feed raw to my dogs, but do supplement with kibble at times and feed kibble to the rescues. I've been pleased with Pinnacle and Innova. For a lower grade food, Nutro Natural High Energy was decent.

Thanks for the comments. But I have to say that lst night I did a taste test with my pup with some raw chicken livers,gizzerts and hearts.They just picked at it but did not eat it. Then my wife tried some raw ground beef and they went crazy over it. they could not get enough. I think I will check into a raw beef diet to see if it is do-able.

Melvin

I'm with you on the Merrick food. It's damn good; have you ever tasted it? lol

As for the price of Chicken Soup, it's much more expensive here than what you just said you're paying for it. Here, a 35 pound bag costs closer to $40, though I don't know the exact price because I don't buy it.

I'm certainly not trying to make you change what you're feeding. Chicken Soup IS a good food; I just wanted to point out that if it's as expensive as it is in my area in other areas, then Premium Edge is a more cost-effective alternative. PE just doesn't have as many different protein sources in the one formula like CS does. It does have a slightly higher percentage of protein though - 26% in the chicken formula and 25% in the sensitive skin formula compared to 24% in CS. More protein is not always better, though. It all depends on the dog. PE also has a higher kcal/cup than CS though, so you could get away with feeding less of it to get the same energy output

You are not going to believe this one, and I still have a hard time accepting it myself. Last fall I had to go remote for a few weeks. I return home and my wife is feeding Luke "Old Roy Lamb and Rice Formula" (from Walmart). I had swapped from Eukanuba, to IAMS, to PRO Plan, to Purina ONE, and had even tried Diamond Lamb and Rice. All of these never seemed to stay with him, he would eat them all, but never really went after it without you putting something on it. I come home from remote, and Luke looks a little heavier, and his coat looks like it's holding nicely. I have to go out again for a week and come home and he even looks better, nice coat, lots of energy, holding his muscle well. Well,
I figure that she stayed with the Science Diet.
Nope folks, she switched him to "Old Roy Lamb and Rice Formula" (from Walmart) at $8.00 a 20lb bag.
That has been almost 3.5 months ago and I'll be darned, he eats it and likes it, and he does very good on it. Even our K-9 vet chewed me out over it, but she has since laid off because it has done him alright.