Vet Recommends Switching to Eukanuba and Royal Canin Dog Food

by Gwen
(Abbotsford, BC, Canada)

We are currently feeding our three dogs Summit Holistics Canadian Chicken dry food.

Our vet recently asked us to change their food to Royal Canin or Eukanuba.

I'm not a Eukanuba fan, not going to touch it with a ten foot pole. I don't know anything about Royal Canin but I'm not sure it's the right way to go either.

Have you reviewed Summit Holistics? Just wondering what your opinion is?

Thanks!!
Gwen

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Editor's Reply
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Hi Gwen -

First off, we're very curious to understand why your vet recommended that you switch all three of your dogs to Eukanuba or Royal Canin dog food?

Did he give you his reasoning for the switch? Are your dogs not doing well on their present food? Did he make any other recommendations other than Eukanuba and Royal Canin? If you're able to elaborate, we believe it will be very informative for our visitors to understand how he came to this professional opinion.

We will go into great detail when we publish our in-depth dog food reviews on all the above brands. However, simply put, in our opinion, we believe you are far better off with Summit Holistics.

Very briefly:

Pros

The Summit dog food brands - Summit Holistics and Summit Originals - are manufactured by Petcurean Pet Nutrition. They are a Canadian, family owned company, who also produce GO! Natural and NOW! Grain Free Dog Food brands.

They use no artificial colors or preservatives, (including Ethoxyquin), in any of their dog food brands. All their meat protein is antibiotic and hormone free and, additionally, they appear to have an excellent testing and quality assurance program.

There's a lot we like about the GO! Natural and NOW! dog food brands.

Cons

On the downside, we'd prefer not to see dog food ingredients such as "yeast extract", "dried garlic" and "rosemary extract" in their dog food recipes. Although, no doubt, they are present in very small quantities, we believe if an ingredient is controversial in any way, it's best to err on the side of caution and leave it out. (Our dogs certainly will not notice a difference, taste-wise nor health-wise!)

We also note that the Summit Holistics dog food brand is below average in protein. In particular, the Australian Lamb Formula has a protein count of 21%. This is extremely low! Summit Holistics Canadian Chicken Formula at 26% protein is more acceptable.

Additionally, they appear to practice what is known as "ingredient splitting", e.g. "Whole Brown Rice", "Rice Bran".

Now, take a very quick glance at the ingredients of Royal Canin. Any time that you spot dog food ingredients such as "rice hulls" and "corn gluten meal", that should be your clue to move on quickly.

We recommend you read our article on dog food ingredients which gives an easy-to-read chart on what you can tell from dog food "product names" (e.g. "Canadian Chicken Formula") as well as an explanation on "ingredient splitting".

We have added Summit Holistics to our dog food comparison chart at 3 Scoops, and Summit Originals at 2 Scoops.

We hope this helps!

To all our visitors, if you have any of your own suggestions or opinions for Gwen and future readers, PLEASE add your comments here!