• Responding to email notices you receive.
    **************************************************
    In short, DON'T! Email notices are to ONLY alert you of a reply to your private message or your ad on this site. Replying to the email just wastes your time as it goes NOWHERE, and probably pisses off the person you thought you replied to when they think you just ignored them. So instead of complaining to me about your messages not being replied to from this site via email, please READ that email notice that plainly states what you need to do in order to reply to who you are trying to converse with.

  • IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ!! About the Google Adsense ads being displayed

    =====================
    Posted 08/15/2025
    =====================


    Yeah, I know. They are a pain in the butt. But they pay the bills to keep my server running. Just a fact of life, I am afraid.

    Want to get rid of them? Simple. Just become a Contributor level member or above and they will be gone. -> Please click HERE."

    Is that too much for me to ask of you to keep this site running? Well, sorry about that. I too wish I could get everything for free. But alas.....

    =====================
    Addendum: 01/10/2026
    =====================


    Google Adsense ad revenue for December, 2025 was just $30 over the cost of the lease for the server running this site. So, in effect, the money providing the incentive for me to continue running this site is coming SOLELY from the paid memberships and sponsorships here. Which honestly ain't much....

Warning: Dogs dying, no recall from PURINA

Honestly I have seen far too many reports/recalls over the years from big, well known, tv advertised brands like this that it was more than enough to steer me away from them. Besides the fact that if you read the ingredients for Beneful specifically it's absolutely horrible.

I know it can seem a bit harsh on the wallet to purchase the healthier food that has main ingredients of various types of meat rather than 10 different types of corn/plant/slaughterhouse by-products and waste as the first 10 ingredients.

But honestly I just can't in good conscience feed my dogs that terrible food. Both of my dogs health went down hill fast when I stayed with my mother for a couple months years and years ago. Their fur/hair/skin was just terrible greasy, dry, flaking, their teeth were disgusting, their breath was rancid, their bowel movements were never good always either constipated or diarrhea, throwing up on a fairly regular basis. And this was all because she purchased cheaper brands such as Purina/Beneful, and the like. I tried to keep them out of her dog's dish away from that terrible food to instead eat their Blue Buffalo, but to them that stuff likely tasted like candy compared to their much healthier food. I saw immediate improvements across the board after leaving and getting them far away from any bad food.

As I've read in many different places over the years in regards to what we feed our animals, surviving on a food is not a good thing. They should be thriving. And no animal, or human for that matter, could survive on what they put in these low-end foods.
 
I used to not want to feed raw but after a lot of reading changed my mind, now the dogs get raw food about 7 days out of the month.
 
Nick I don't "disbelieve" people whose dogs are dying. I'm a vet tech and my job is to collect histories from people whose dogs are dying so we can figure out what is going on. I have a lot of faith in owners when it comes to their individual dogs.

The testimonials in the link you posted stated symptoms ranging from not eating until the food was changed, vomiting, diarrhea, blood disorders, neurological disorders, kidney disease, liver failure, infections, puritis, and lethargy, and skin tags. That's a lot of different issues and all of them can be caused by a multitude of things, including each other, resulting in a sick or dead pet. In all of the recalls that I have been involved with over the years, there has always been a specific, identifiable disease process that causes specific, identifiable symptoms. There's just too many symptoms and too many ways people are describing what happened to their pets for there to be any way to say those illnesses and deaths were linked just because they all ate the same type of dog food.

Owners grieving over the unexpected loss of a pet are always looking for answers, causes, something or someone to blame, etc. It's a normal part of the grieving process to want to KNOW exactly what happened, and to be angry about it.

What I would like to see is a scientific analysis and report of these cases with a very clear A+B=C chain of events before there is mass panic created over nothing.

Do I believe Beneful is a great dog food choice: No. I don't recommend it and wouldn't use it with my own dogs, because of the ingredients and nutritional analysis. But at this point I don't see any clear reason to believe it is killing pets. For me that's like getting a group of a few hundred people together who all have cancer and eat at Burger King and then telling everyone to stop eating Burger /king because it gives you cancer.
 
This crap is why my dog has been on Raw for a good while now, absolutely 100% advise that people look into it. Amazing results and much healthier animals by FAR. My vet even hosted a RAW diet presentation presented by BRAVO to educate people about the merits of feeding a raw diet. Good presentation, not BIASED toward BRAVO, either. Very refreshing. I went so that i could be an advocate for a RAW diet, as a person who dealt with the issues of a dog who just COULD NOT tolerate kibble.

After all the dry food recall issues and him not being really CONSTANT and not entirely wanting to eat the amount of food he needed to be eating ( i fed Orijen, TOTW and California Natural) I changed to Vital Essentials Raw ( premade patties) Immediately he was better, loved the food and from that point on always ate his meals. ( he ate three of their large patties a day, about 1.5 lbs of food.) We recently switched to BRAVO to save 60.00 a month but also only stayed with premade because we do not have our own deep freezer yet, once I get one, I will be making my own food and buying everything i need in bulk.
 
Local sourcing for whole prey chicken,goat and wild game processors
are our go to sources, our dogs also love fresh water fish.
They have thrived from birth and will never eat commercial processed ration.
Raw diets are all in or nothing, something people just don't fully understand.
You can not half ass this
 
Absolutely. Gross you out or not, people need to make sure they feed raw appropriately, cant just go to the store and buy all musclemeats to feed! Do LOTS of reading and research to understand all it entails. Hence also why we currently feed premade. I prefer prey model myself and thats what we will be going with once we are ready to switch. Luckilly i can raise all the chicken i might need myself. ;) Everything else i can get locally easilly enough. But i am more fortunate to live in heavy organic farm country, too.
 
Focal said:
Everyone beware! As most know, I lost almost my entire rat colony last summer from a Purina / Land O' Lakes / MAZURI RECALL in 2012.
Click to expand...

Nick I noticed that Mazuri makes a tortoise food (I saw some for sale in the classified). Could you please say more about the Mazuri recall? Was it only rat food?
 
skirtinthedirt said:
Nick ...
Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply, Emily. I was a little narrowminded about this yesterday and probably didn't keep my mind as open as I should of. Hopefully, this is just a scare because in the case that it is not, I am fearful of someone not finding out until their pet is gone.
 
Metachrosis said:
Word back from Purina is all allegations
are false
Click to expand...

Yes and they also said in that same reply that they have a "comprehensive food safety program, and we test and monitor to help and ensure product quality and safety." But if you look at history, they only test after there is a problem. Look at the product recall above. If they test to ensure safety, why did it take them until mid-July to recall food that was processed and sold in May? Tommy, when did you start believing what the man feeds you :rofl:
 
Nick, I read the link you provided. Recalled Mazuri foods include turtle and crocodilian foods. I wonder should a separate thread be made so those who have those kinds of critters but not dogs be warned?
 
Back
Top