Poor Cricket does not like poor quality dog food, and Trying a New Way to Get Dog Food in the New Year ;-)

We have had some food woes to start our New Years off with! I have fed my dogs raw for YEARS now, but, last month with the holidays coming up, I was having trouble doing the drive to get one of my staple foods-chicken backs and necks from a restaurant supply store. For a few weeks I was giving the dogs some kibble that I had around the house, I had used the kibble for training and it said GRAIN FREE, so how could it not be a nice high quality kibble? I was still giving the dogs meat and bones in the evening but just for breakfast they got kibble, with some eggs, or yogurt or assorted things like that.

Well, Cricket was just acting funny and lots of dogs were acting funny around her, so a friend had suggested I check for a urinary tract infection because in her experience sometimes when dogs were overly interested in a girl, it might be that she had an infection....

I took Cricket in and her urine had a very high pH, and lots of crystals and lots of gunk. Ughghghg. The vet was pretty sure it was the kibble. Turns out I was using the Costco Natures Domain-Grain Free, I generally trust Costco products.., it was a good price and I guess I equated grain free with really good. Looking closer at the label there is a lot of potato, which the vet felt could cause the problems. The other dogs seem fine but gosh figures how many people feed crap for years and years and their dogs are just fine, but I slack off for a couple of weeks, and we get problems, LOL.

Oddly enough the vet had me give Cricket cranberry, that is not so odd..vitamin C to change the ph, still not so odd...but she wanted me to use pool PH strips and test the PH of her urine and keep track of what it was at different times. So if the neighbors did not already think I am a FREAK, they are now treated to me following my dog with a shallow dish and collecting her urine at all hours of the day and night. Yep I am SURE the neighbors have no clue what to think of me at this point. OOH well.

MR CHEWY-HOW I GOT ORIGINS DOG FOOD SHIPPED RIGHT TO MY DOOR WITH NO SHIPPING COSTS...
Right about the time I was questioning my dog food I got a coupon from a company that I had not heard of before. Mr. Chewy http://www.mrchewy.com/ I thought it was really neat because they had some of the foods that we just can not get in our town I use Origin's dog food for training a lot and for occasional mornings when I don't have anything else to feed, but I usually had to get it when I was in one of the bigger cities around here. I used my coupon for ordering some Origin dog food. They have cat food, some pet supplies,a bunch of treats,cat litter and it even says they offer prescription pet foods, who knew????

I was really curious about how it would work...I ordered the food and in about a week it arrived (it seems the company is on the East coast so I think it took a little longer to get all the way our here), the bag was inside a box, and I think Fed Ex delivered it. I ordered some treats and they came in a different box about a day later. They offer free shipping on any order over $49, I thought that was pretty cool because one has to wonder how much the shipping cost of a 40 lb bag of dog food would be??

So...it looks like you can set up a regular shipment and get your food on a schedule which would be really nice if that was your source of dog or cat food....

The best thing I saw on their web site was that on your first order the company will donate $10 to an animal charity-North Shore Animal League http://www.animalleague.org/ , Best Friends Animal Society http://www.bestfriends.org/, or Bidawee http://www.bideawee.org/

IN ADDITION IF YOU ORDER FROM MR. CHEWY AND USE A REFERRAL CODE...They will donate $10 to the above charities and GIVE YOU A 10% DISCOUNT. You can choose any of those charities to get the $10 donation or ask that Mr. Chewy splits it between the three charities. So the referral code is MOCH2275--and I don't think I get anything from anyone using that code, but you will get your 10% off!