New food and visits the the store

So as I've mentioned in a few of my past posts, Kobi hates his food right now. When we adopted him he was being fed IAMS at the shelter which is very generously donated by IAMS. Personally I'm not a huge fan of IAMS, though I don't have much to spend on top quality dog food, I would still like to feed the best food I can afford. When I shop for dog food I always check the ingredients to see what comes first. If corn meal or gluten meal are first, I won't buy it. I will settle for a meat meal as the first ingredient but would prefer at least a whole meat as the first ingredient. The best that I have found is the PC brand Nutrition First. I really liked this brand for a few reasons, it has quality ingredients that surpass most of the other grocery store brands, it is cheaper than most of the other brands, and it had a great selection, i.e. it was the only brand that carried a seniors formula that I could feed to Scout.

Kobi would prefer if I didn't write this post and cuddle with him instead.

 We switched Kobi onto their puppy food shortly after adopting him and that's what he was happy eating until about 9 or 10 months. At that point he began to have no interest in the food what so ever. We tried everything from sprinkling it with parmasean cheese, adding water, adding ketchup, and finally yogurt did the trick. For a while. Last week though he stopped eating even the food coated in yogurt and refused to eat his meals at all.

We got some food from my fiance's parents, they feed their dog Innova, to see if it just the PC food he wasn't interested in. He ate that down in under a minute. So yesterday Kobi and I went out to Global Pet foods to talk to them about a new food for him. I must admit I was very impressed with them. I was always under the impression they only had dog food but was pleasantly surprised that they had lots of other things as well, they had toys and supplies, and even had cat bird and ferret supplies as well. I asked one of the store clerks for help knowing it would be impossible to find a new food myself. I explained what I wanted the and price range I was looking for and that Kobi is a picky eater. They came up with three brands for me to try, Fromms, Oven Baked and Horizon Legacy. They were even willing to give me free samples of each to take home to see which food Kobi liked best before I purchased a large bag of food.

On a different note, Kobi did fantastic! Normally from the moment we enter a store he is anxious and barks. He remained quiet almost the entire time, only barking twice. Now that being said I was dishing out treats like my life depended on it, but a good sign is that he was willing to eat them. That wasn't the case when we went to Pets Unlimited. I needed to get cans of crickets to feed me gecko and they are hard to find. I wasn't expecting the store to be packed with people that early in the morning and thought I would need to take Kobi back out to the car but he remained silent. He was very anxious as he wouldn't take treats most of the time we were in there but I was impressed with him. On a couple of occasions children came barreling down the aisle to say hi to him but knowing he wasn't remotely ready for that I quickly ducked down another aisle to avoid them. Kobi was even able to remain when in the incredibly crowded line up and even let some people and a little girl pet him. He did bark at the little girl but I gave her and her father warning that he would probably bark and it was going to be loud when he did but that he just has a massive bark and isn't mean or scary.

Kobi was fed innova again last night and didn't eat it, which may have been because neither of us were home to feed him and my fiance's father had to come by to feed and walk the dogs for us. This morning I gave him the Oven Baked which he ate every last bit but is reluctant to take it when fed randomly. The Horizon Legacy he doesn't like and so far he takes the Fromms every time and I will try that one tonight, so far it looks like we'll be switching to Fromms and I am excited to take Kobi back to the store to pick it up with me!