My dogs also eat home-cooked dog food. But it takes a lot of careful planning to home cook and provide the proper proportions of carbs, protein and nutrients. A good book to read about home cooking your pets' foods is Natural Health for Dogs and Cats by Dr. Pitcairn.
PTurner, look on the Orijen bag for an expiration date or "best used by" date before purchasing. It is tiny print, but you will find it. My dogs eat Orijen as a supplement to their homecooked food and as treats, so the bag lasts for a while. I put a portion of the dry food in our freezer in the original bag to be sure it stays fresh. I just squeeze out the excess air and roll it up and secure with rubber bands.
Really good treats are available in lots of places. Some that are easy to find are made by Mother Hubbard and Solid Gold. Evangers makes some soft Turkey Jerkey treats that dogs really like. Look at the food list again and find the highest rated foods, then look for treats made by those companies. Again, you will find the really best treats at the doggie specialty shops, and not in the grocery store.
DogFoodAdvisor is a pretty good site. But the very smartest, bestest, most wonderful source for deciding which food you will give your furry family members is the "Whole Dog Journal". They have a paper publication and a website and are THE SOURCE for selecting pet foods. Each year they have an approved list of dry and wet foods with strict criteria for selection. In a separate post, I'll copy their 2010 approved food list, and we'll see if it passes the copywrite test for this website (I'll credit the source).
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 K9-Lovers
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