Dog Food Reviews Follow-Up

As a new subscriber to Whole Dog Journal, this is the first time I have received the issue that contains your recommended top quality dry food for dogs (February 2007). I was surprised that Solid Gold was not part of your list. I recently lost a 14-month-old Golden Retriever to cancer. Since that experience, pet food quality is my top priority for my dogs.

Marie Camirand Montreal, Canada

Solid Gold’s products did appear on our lists of “top dry foods” and “top wet foods” (March 2007). The dry products we highlighted were listed under their names: Hund-N-Flocken and Mmillennia.

I feed my three Border Collies Flint River Ranch food with an occasional treat of The Honest Kitchen and they are doing great. However, I noticed that Flint River Ranch was not on your list this year. Can you tell me why?

Barbara Berg Via e-mail

My sincere apologies for not explaining the omission of FRR’s dry food this year. As far as I know, nothing has changed about the food’s ingredients or manufacturing; it still meets our selection criteria. But every year I receive complaints from readers who are frustrated by the management style/business structure of this multi-level marketing company. Consumers either get no response, or a poor response, when they try to reach the “home office” – the people responsible for formulating and making the food. Consumers with questions or concerns about the pet food are encouraged, instead, to bring their questions to an independent distributor of the food near them. Often, these independent agents are unable to answer consumers’ questions about the food – and are even sometimes unable to find out the information from the “senior distributor” above them, much less the company representatives.

Recent events have demonstrated how important it is to be able to quickly and easily contact the maker of a dog food, to report problems, have confidence that the problems will be recorded and considered, and to receive quick and reliable answers to urgent questions. It’s been our experience, and that of many of our readers, that the folks in FRR’s corporate office discourage interaction with consumers. Given this persistent complaint, I decided to stop listing the products; it was no reflection whatsoever on the products themselves.

A phone number, please, for the company that sells Bioflow magnetic therapy products for dogs (as mentioned in “Help Rover Get Over It,” April 2007)? It’s incredibly annoying for those of us who don’t have a computer (and don’t plan to get one!) when only a website or e-mail address is given for a company or person.