Eukanuba 28-Day Challenge: Final Week
March 15, 2011 by Paris Permenter and John Bigley
Filed under Bloggie
Today we completed the Eukanuba 28-Day Challenge! For the past month, we’ve been feeding both Tiki and Irie a diet of Eukanuba’s Naturally Wild food. (We fed venison and turkey; salmon is also available and we’re going to try that next.)
What’s the result? Both dogs love this food which has venison as its first ingredient, which we love. We’ve been meticulous in our feeding of both dogs (spurred by our vet’s observation that both our dogs are “at the upper end” in terms of their weight and could each lose some weight.) Irie has lost three pounds (and our goal is for her to lose three more.) Tiki has lost only one pound so she has a ways to go.
Of course, we don’t know if the weight loss is due to the food (it is not a weight control food) or due to our strict attention to how much we feed them at breakfast and dinner. We’ve also tried to increase their activity level, adding time to both the morning and evening walks and playing fetch (a game which Tiki always interrupts by wrestling with Irie…but at least they’re moving…)
At any rate, our participation in the Eukanuba 28-Day Challenge has helped us focus our attention on what we feed our dogs. We’ve learned to measure every meal; we now keep a measuring scoop inside the dog food so we’re always sure just how much we’re feeding.
Have we seen a difference in our dogs’ coats? Nails? Muscle tone? Twenty-eight days doesn’t really seem like long enough to see major changes (we know that we don’t see major changes in us with just a month-long change of our diet). Irie does seem to have better muscle tone (but that could be from the loss of a few pounds…even though it’s just three pounds, her hair is super short so it’s easy to see a change). Tiki’s long coat makes it a lot more difficult to see changes.
Our verdict? We definitely liked Eukanuba Naturally Wild and we’ll continue to feed it in rotation with other foods (including a homemade diet). We never feed our dogs one food exclusively. Our philosophy is that we wouldn’t want to eat one food all the time so why would our dogs? We rotate several premium foods and we’re definitely going to be adding Eukanuba Naturally Wild to our list. Along with the fact that our dogs really enjoy it, we like the fact that a specific meat source is the number one ingredient and we like the fact that multiple flavors are available.
And, most especially, we like that this Challenge helped us to be more cognizant of our dogs’ food and our feeding practices. That’s definitely a challenge all pet parents should take, not just for a month, but throughout their dog’s lifetime.
About Paris Permenter and John Bigley
DogTipper publishers Paris Permenter and John Bigley are a husband-wife team of full-time writers. The couple has authored over two dozen books and 2,500+ magazine articles.
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