Originally Posted by kitsilano

Thank you bro DogCom for the above and may I add....

I will say the main culprit is nutrition. I have deep reservations about a lot of commercial dog foods...cannot be very specific and everybody should know why. Just to highlight a very generalised observation and not targetting at any brand in particular.

My way of calculating dog food worth(aga...aga...hor!!). If let say a 40 lbs bag of brand X(hypothetical) is selling at US$30.00 in the US petshop...I will work backward to its production cost. Petshop aga...aga make $5.00....middleman or what we call wholesalers who buy from brand X manufacturer and deliver to pet shops...aga...aga also make $5.00. So roughly 40lbs food leave manufacturing plant at US$20.00...aga...aga ok. Manufacturer got to take care of administrative overhead and the biggest chunk of cost got to factor in is advertising and on top of that got also to make money. Let say out of the US$20 remaining, for simplicity $5.00 also goes into manufacturer's profit and $3 into administrative (salaries, utilities, plant repair etc) and advertising expenses.....so now we are left with $12 to cover ingredients cost. $12 divided by 40lbs equal .30cts per ilb. For 30cts per lb what ingredients can you put into the food...some more most dogfood are manufactured in the USA. Just some food for thought and to think of it the dog food mkt is so saturated with so many brands, advertising costs keep on going up...how?... where to cut corners to maintain profit margin. You can't keep on cutting staff salaries, utilities bill and plant repairs...where will be the easiest thing to cut or downgrade? Also I will like to highlight that the FDA of USA who is the controlling body for dog food ingredients only state(as far as I know...maybe there are changes now...I doubt) that in all dog food manufactured in the US must carry so much protein but never highlight whether must be meat protein which is essential for carnivore like dog....see the point...manufacturer have the liberty of putting in vegetable protein which is cheaper and still meet the basic FDA requirements.

Also I will like to highlight that ants, ticks and other small insects love to burrow into the undercoat of dogs and that also cause a lot of problem... I totally agree with bro DogCom that dogs that are groomed daily seldom got severe skin problem.

Just my two cents worth.


Regards


Kitsilano