Originally,the plan was to sell or give away the Nature’s Variety Instinct Beef & Lamb because well,Lacey wasn’t taking to it very well BUT..one night she started refusing Acana Grasslands(the one she’s supposed to finish up before opening Acana Wild Praire & Acana Pacifica)Acana Wild Prairie is mostly Chicken & Whitefish.Acana Pacifica is mostly Salmon,Herring and Whitefish.The plan was to do Chicken & Whitefish Proteins.Both bags remain unopened currently.When she started refusing the Acana Grasslands(which is graciously going to Brownie as there’s less than 2 pounds left),I gave her the Nature’s Variety Instinct Beef & Lamb.The next morning there was very little tear stains and this morning(Sunday) there were absolutely none at all.Not even the slightest bit was seen on her face!Truthfully,that is a SHOCKER!No other food(that hasn’t had apple cider vinegar)in the list has ever Chicken,Beef,Turkey,Fish,Lamb,Duck has ever stopped her tear stains this much.Certainly higher quality foods do help as most people say with almost every high quality brand of dog food has said BUT none of those past foods has ever had ACV in it..However the truth stands with Nature’s Variety Instinct…Not a bit of tear stains.We’re seeing such good results I am going to keep her on it for at least 6 weeks to see if we can find any more improvement then we’ll try Acana Pacifica which does not have ACV and see if tear stains come back.If they do,that will tell us feeding Lacey food with ACV has a big part to do with her tear stains & that would prioritize how we feed her a great deal BECAUSE a lot of foods don’t have ACV and if that DOES help with tear stains we WILL BE adamant to stick to foods with only Apple Cider Vinegar such as possibly all Nature’s Variety Prairie(Possibly as it has ACV that’s supposed to help prevent UTI’s & may give it a shot in the near future)& Nature’s Variety Instinct with being consistent of Primal Frozen Raw or Nature’s Variety Instinct Raw which means can food would likely be out of the question.Whether she’ll take the Primal or Nature’s Variety Instinct Raw or not she’d have no choice.We’d eliminate all other dry food options if it comes down to the fact that tear stains do clear up more on ACV based foods than non based ACV dog foods.
We weren’t really going to switch off of Acana/Orijen completely but we may have to rethink things if ACV does help with tear stains so we’ll see where we’ll stand with dry foods/can foods after a month on Nature’s Variety Instinct Beef & Lamb followed by a month of Acana Pacifica.
Category Archives: Primal Frozen Formulas
Frozen Raw Food vs Freeze Dried Raw Food Brands
Ok,so in the last post we mentioned that because Lacey is sensitive to the amount of carob,fish & lamb in her diet we decided to switch from Stella & Chewy’s.Stella & Chewy’s Beef formula is good but she didn’t like it.However her stool was good on it but the lamb formula was “absolutely loved!” by Lacey but the result was every time she had it she had soft stools..and we can’t have that!
So,I wanted something that was freeze dried till we got her more stable on eating raw food.Right now she’s only getting it a few times a week to help the Halo’s meat content(first ingredient is chicken/wild salmon which is less than what it says on the package once water is taken out).But w/the lamb sensitivity to Stella & Chewy’s which she loved…and got soft stools on it…I decided to try to keep her on freeze dried until…she got more regular meals on it..the thing w/freeze dried is you can keep it in the bag that it came in & all you do is break it up into smaller pieces & there’s no refrigeration time..no water needed though you can…BUT when the time came to buy Nature’s Variety Freeze Dried or Frozen like in the last post we mentioned about trying the lamb…we got the coupon and went down to Naturally Pet but they don’t sell it there…but they do sell the dry and can food…Now,the only other place that might have it is Bark Ave down in Hawaii Kai which is out of our way for us to travel just to get it or even check to see if they got it…..So,we had no other choice except to get Primal..one which I was sort of against from the start..not that it’s not a great food because it really is..that it’s frozen & you need to rethaw it..The good thing is it’s sold in more places in town where we live(not far to travel except a few miles<15 miles for sure)..it can stay in the fridge for up to 5 days unlike can is only up to 3 days.Odd thing is when you look it up online primal comes up less with search results vs nature's variety raw but when it comes to stores only 2 stores on Oahu SHOULD carry it and that was Naturally Pet & Bark Ave.Primal on the other hand seems it's more preferred in Hawaii.
Anyways a long story short,we got the Primal Lamb Frozen to see how Lacey will like it.I brought it in the car and she was just sniffing away at it..licking her mouth…When I showed it to her since I was going to unthaw it for her dinner, I took up all of her dry food & no treats or table food so when it comes to dinner she'll be hungry,she was licking her mouth already begging me for the piece that was to be unthawed…The result will be if she will eat it and how her bowel movements are.If both is good results we can stick with feeding her various formulas from Primal & get a card from Naturally Pet as a frequent buyer program.The other thing I like about it while it does not have L.Acid is that it's mostly organic food in the formulas.And we alredy know she loves the treats…Oh yeah the price we paid ~$32.?? with tax for a 4 pound bag.Expensive but good.The pieces are very small just one oz so it's actually better than Stella & Chewy.Stella & Chewy was $13.00 without tax for only 6 oz.
