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Posted by auggiessissy on March 10, 2003 at 23:12:44:

In Reply to: Has anyone ever heard of or used Exclusive by PMI Nutrition? posted by Jean on January 22, 2003 at 15:55:35:

I'm not going to get into the debate about the validity of the ingredients list on the package. Instead I am going to give a personal (well, okay, I'm not the one who ate it!) testimony. I am a twentysomething living with my parents right now. We had a family dog many years ago and pretty much always gave him Dog Chow. When my parents got another dog a couple of months back, the breeder had started him on a different brand, apparently sold only through feed stores. Mom went to the local feed store to buy more and read the label first, only to be appalled by the low quality ingredients in it. The sales associate suggested PMI Exclusive Puppy formula, so she decided to try it for Auggie. His stools went from being loose and sometimes runny (had problems with it matting in his hair), to being firmer (but never hard like he's constipated), well formed, and smaller (no more problems with hair matting under his tail, either).

We took the bag in to get our vet's approval (although he was already switched over by then) and she wouldn't support any brand name other than the big names like Purina, Science Diet, and Iams because they've done years of testing on puppies, not just a handful of puppies and/or lab analysis only. Based on her recommendation to switch, we went back to the feed store and pored over all they had to offer, and we came back to choosing between PMI Exclusive, Purina ProPlan for Small Breed Puppies, and Science Diet Naturals...all seemed to be about the same based on labels, except the PMI was a couple dollars cheaper so we stuck with it. (We also researched and found out, as mentioned in one of the replies, that it is a Purina subsidiary, so that deflated our vet's protest).

I guess we won't truly know until later in life, but Auggie loves the food, is growing well, has lots of energy, and even eats less than the chart on the back suggests, which saves us even more.

PS: I've been told and read in quite a few books and online sources that canned dog food is not necessary for dogs because you're just paying for all that water, plus it is bad in the sense that it encourages tartar/plaque on their teeth, whereas the dry kibble helps scrape that away.

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