# Lack of options...



## Golden Mama (Oct 8, 2011)

This really sucks...I live on Okinawa, Japan and the lack of dog food options is really depressing. Ok, I can't say they don't have options...BUT most people here have tiny dogs...like dogs you carry in a purse and any good food they sell only comes in small bags. I have a golden retriever...I need big bags of food. Buying food on the economy is out of the question as the Yen rate is in the pooper...a "large" bag of ProPlan is $90 after the Yen conversion! WHAT!? Heck no! I am stuck buying the food at the BX on post... 

I have tried ordering food online and the shipping is just too unreliable and outrageous!...I ordered some Fromm a month ago and it still isn't here...I am currently feeding a little raw with Sojos complete (which I ordered online)...this is making his poops GINORMOUS and he has stinky gas. I don't have the space (living in Japan) to go full out raw, if he were a small dog I'd have no problem. I know I do not want to continue with Sojos either...

This is what is sold at the BX...which one would feed?
Iams
Purina One
Eukanuba
Science Diet
Nutro Natural Choice
Pedigree

They also carry Alpo, Kibbles N' Bits...you get the picture. I am going to research the ingredients of each, but I'm sure it's all the same...I think I am leaning toward Nutro.


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## flippedstars (May 22, 2010)

Hmmm if those were my options...and I had no others...geesh, I dunno what I'd do. Maybe the Nutro? With a hefty serving of table scraps that are 'safe' as often as possible as well as raw meaty bones when you can get them?

That is a pretty awful list to choose from. 

Maybe you should open your own small shop and carry the good stuff!


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## Golden Mama (Oct 8, 2011)

flippedstars said:


> Hmmm if those were my options...and I had no others...geesh, I dunno what I'd do. Maybe the Nutro? With a hefty serving of table scraps that are 'safe' as often as possible as well as raw meaty bones when you can get them?
> 
> That is a pretty awful list to choose from.
> 
> Maybe you should open your own small shop and carry the good stuff!


No joke right...


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## Golden Mama (Oct 8, 2011)

Ok...got the first 5 ingredients to each...and just as I guessed it's about all the same.

Iams-chicken, corn meal, ground whole grain sorghum, chicken by-product, dried beet pulp
Eukanuba-chicken meal, chicken by-product, corn meal, ground whole grain sorghum, brewers rice
Purina One-chicken, brewers rice, corn gluten meal, whole ground corn, poultry by-product
Science Diet-Whole ground corn, chicken by-product meal, soybean meal, animal fat, soybean oil (i am seriously disgusted and will NEVER buy science diet)
Nutro-Chicken meal, ground rice, corn gluten meal, wheat flour, rice bran

Eukanuba seems to have the most meat content...i guess...anyone have any ideas? I've fed him pedigree cans which he had nice small solid poops...not sure if it's practical because he'd have to eat like 3 cans a day.


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## hmbutler (Aug 4, 2011)

Golden Mama said:


> Ok...got the first 5 ingredients to each...and just as I guessed it's about all the same.
> 
> Iams-chicken, corn meal, ground whole grain sorghum, chicken by-product, dried beet pulp
> Eukanuba-chicken meal, chicken by-product, corn meal, ground whole grain sorghum, brewers rice
> ...


I'm not totally knowledgable when it comes to ingredient lists, but from my basic understanding, Purina and Iams, surprisingly enough, could be deemed the best because they actually have "chicken" as the first ingredient, not chicken meal or by products. But Eukanuba at least lists two ingredients before any corn or grains. SD is clearly the worst, with more ground corn than anything else, and the only "meat" is by-product meal... wtf man? thats terrible

Is it possible to special order a better quality food from another area in the country? Or drive a longer distance to pick up a better food? I drive about an hour and a half to get a grain free kibble for my cat (though I am now going to try switch her to raw too)


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## Golden Mama (Oct 8, 2011)

hmbutler said:


> I'm not totally knowledgable when it comes to ingredient lists, but from my basic understanding, Purina and Iams, surprisingly enough, could be deemed the best because they actually have "chicken" as the first ingredient, not chicken meal or by products. But Eukanuba at least lists two ingredients before any corn or grains. SD is clearly the worst, with more ground corn than anything else, and the only "meat" is by-product meal... wtf man? thats terrible
> 
> Is it possible to special order a better quality food from another area in the country? Or drive a longer distance to pick up a better food? I drive about an hour and a half to get a grain free kibble for my cat (though I am now going to try switch her to raw too)


I can get Orijen on the economy...but that means paying the Yen rate, I didn't go to the store that carries Orijen but the last time I was there they didn't carry the large bags. I did go to another pet store that carried a "large" bag of ProPlan which was 7.5 kg for 6820 Yen. That equals $87.50 for a 16.5 lbs of food...of ProPlan...I don't even wanna touch how much Orijen would cost...


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## MollyWoppy (Mar 19, 2010)

Maybe the petshop could order in bigger bags of Orijen/Fromm, in fact almost any type of kibble other than the ones you listed in your first post. But, if 16lbs of ProPlan is $88.00, I'd hate to know what Orijen would cost. Although, there's no harm in asking, it could save you the shipping costs at least.
Have you thought about maybe cooking different meat/livers etc and mixing it into the more expensive kibbles to bring down the price a bit? And a RMB a couple of times a week for the teeth aspect?


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## Jacksons Mom (Jun 13, 2010)

That really sucks!

Do you have access to Purina One Beyond? For a Purina food, it's probably one of their best.

Chicken, chicken meal, whole oat meal, whole barley, soybean meal, whole brown rice, animal fat preserved with mixed-tocopherols (form of Vitamin E), dried beet pulp, dried egg product, natural flavor, fish oil, caramel color, salt, dried carrots, dried tomatoes, dried apples, calcium phosphate, potassium chloride, choline chloride, zinc sulfate, Vitamin E supplement, ferrous sulfate, manganese sulfate, niacin, calcium carbonate, Vitamin A supplement, calcium pantothenate, thiamine mononitrate, copper sulfate, riboflavin supplement, Vitamin B-12 supplement, garlic oil, pyridoxine hydrochloride, folic acid, Vitamin D-3 supplement, calcium iodate, biotin, menadione sodium bisulfite complex (source of Vitamin K activity), sodium selenite.

Crude Protein (Min) 26.0%
Crude Fat (Min) 17.0%
Crude Fiber (Max) 4.0%
Moisture (Max) 12.0%
Linoleic Acid (Min) 1.5%
Calcium (Ca) (Min) 1.0%
Phosphorus (P) (Min) 0.8%
Zinc (Zn) (Min) 150 ppm
Selenium (Se) (Min) 0.35 ppm
Vitamin A (Min) 14,000 IU/kg
Vitamin E (Min) 150 IU/kg
Omega-3 Fatty Acids* (Min) 0.35%
Omega-6 Fatty Acids* (Min) 1.60%


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## Sprocket (Oct 4, 2011)

Kind of ironic that the low quality foods are so readily available in Japan. Goes along with everything we know about those foods.

I'm sorry you are in such a predicament


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## biancaDB (Nov 3, 2011)

hmbutler said:


> I'm not totally knowledgable when it comes to ingredient lists, but from my basic understanding, Purina and Iams, surprisingly enough, could be deemed the best because they actually have "chicken" as the first ingredient, not chicken meal or by products. But Eukanuba at least lists two ingredients before any corn or grains. SD is clearly the worst, with more ground corn than anything else, and the only "meat" is by-product meal... wtf man? thats terrible
> 
> Is it possible to special order a better quality food from another area in the country? Or drive a longer distance to pick up a better food? I drive about an hour and a half to get a grain free kibble for my cat (though I am now going to try switch her to raw too)


It is actually better to see "chicken meal" because that is chicken in its dehydrated form where as if you just see "chicken", once you remove the water content it is placed much further down the list and the ingredients like corn and stuff after become the first ingredients. There is nothing wrong with "meal" just as long as it doesnt say by product, animal, animal byproduct or anything like that infront of it


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## Unosmom (May 3, 2009)

What about nutro ultra? I dont know if this is close to you, but according to Earthborn website, this store carries their product
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## Caty M (Aug 13, 2010)

I'd go with raw.. you don't have any good options to choose from, and you don't have to buy a lot at once at all. You could really buy weekly if you wanted to, or even more often. I only use the freezer on the top of my fridge for the pets and it works just fine, and I feed around 1.5lb per day.


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## PDXdogmom (Jun 30, 2010)

Hands down, I would choose the Eukanuba if I were in your position. I fed it to my dogs about six years ago before I moved on to other foods. If they carry the Eukanuba Active Performance formula that would be even better. You could always add bits of egg or fresh cooked meat to further enhance the quality.

I also fed Nutro at one point with poor results.
Science Diet is over-priced for such poor ingredients.
I would avoid Purina One because it has gluten, soy and unnamed animal fat (meaning the fat could be from any animal and vary from bag to bag).


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## Golden Mama (Oct 8, 2011)

Thanks everyone...if I go with kibble, it'll be Eukanuba, seems to have the "best" ingredients of what I have to choose from. Also the most expensive...
Talking with the hubby and he said we could probably handle doing raw and just buying meat weekly. We are also a family of 5 so we do use quite a bit of freezer space (just the top freezer of a fridge) and no space here for a deep freezer. 
I'm not super excited about spending an extra $50 for however long a 40 lb bag will last...AGH! Thanks again everyone...lots to think about...


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## Golden Mama (Oct 8, 2011)

Jacksons Mom said:


> That really sucks!
> 
> Do you have access to Purina One Beyond? For a Purina food, it's probably one of their best.
> 
> ...


That would be freaking amazing...if they sold it here...they carry the cat food but not the dog food!


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## KittyKat (Feb 11, 2011)

Golden Mama said:


> Thanks everyone...if I go with kibble, it'll be Eukanuba, seems to have the "best" ingredients of what I have to choose from. Also the most expensive...
> Talking with the hubby and he said we could probably handle doing raw and just buying meat weekly. We are also a family of 5 so we do use quite a bit of freezer space (just the top freezer of a fridge) and no space here for a deep freezer.
> I'm not super excited about spending an extra $50 for however long a 40 lb bag will last...AGH! Thanks again everyone...lots to think about...


I would do the raw weekly, all the choices there are pretty poor, and rather expensive!


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## MollyWoppy (Mar 19, 2010)

You could always tell your hubby he needs to get a second job!


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## Caty M (Aug 13, 2010)

Yeah seriously, wow, I thought things were expensive here in Canada, LOL. If you only bought every week or even twice a week, you wouldn't need to use the freezer that much at all. Not IDEAL imo, since you can't buy in bulk and save, but probably still a heck of a lot cheaper and you can rest assured you are feeding something good and without a ton of starches and chemicals.


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## Sapphire-Light (Aug 8, 2010)

Have you looked into the ingredients on the bags at the store? 

Sites like dog food advisor has the us formulas ingredient list, most of the times the formulas of a same brand are different outside of the us.

For example the us royal canin is a semi decent, but the one we get is the latin american version that has unamed meats and fats and, the meats are like the 3rd ingredient on the list and the first are corn and rice.

However the science diet has meat as the first ingredient and has pork fat instead of animal fat.


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## Golden Mama (Oct 8, 2011)

Sapphire-Light said:


> Have you looked into the ingredients on the bags at the store?
> 
> Sites like dog food advisor has the us formulas ingredient list, most of the times the formulas of a same brand are different outside of the us.
> 
> ...


The bags at the BX is American food, we are Army stationed on Okinawa. I can't read the food in the pet stores cuz it's in Japanese  I wondered if there was a difference between ProPlan from the states and ProPlan or Science diet in Japan...


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## Huginn (Nov 21, 2011)

I don't know if there is a difference between ProPlan in the states and ProPlan in Japan, but I can tell you it sounds like there is a difference in Nutros. I saw that you put Nutro's Natural Choice as having ground corn. My parents have been feeding that one for years because it is corn free and has no bi-products (it's the best I can get them to buy). 
I also wanted to mention as someone else stated that having "whole chicken" or "chicken" is not as good as having "chicken meal" it sounds better, but they include the weight of the water within the chicken and if you removed the water from the weight it would actually end up farther down the list.


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