First of all I would like to share my story with all of you. My chocolate lab developed mysterious skin allegies when he was about four or five months old. I went to two different vets and both of them said it was sarcoptic mange although they could not ever find a single microscopic organism. My boyfriend and I spent around $2,000 trying to figure out what was wrong with our puppy. We tried EVERY CREAM, HORMONE SHOTS, SPRAYS, BATHS, SULFUR SPRAYS, EVERYTHING! We dealth with this issue for about five months and my poor puppy looked terrible , had chewed his entire leg until there was no hair left and had scabs all over him from his constant scratching. Finally a rep at petsmart recommended switching his food. Running out of options we tried the nutro natura choice large breed puppy lamb and rice formula. In a month I had a different puppy! My puppy stopped scratching and biting himself, he had grown back most of his hair and became very shiny and healthy looking. No one could believe it was the same dog. Recently I changed to nutro ultra and I have been just as satisfied as I was with natural choice. I switched because ultra is holitic and targets the enitire dogs body not just their stomaches. I get compliments on my dog all the time about how shiny his coat is and how heathy he looks. I sympathize with people who have had negative experiences with Nutro but you have to remember that every dog is different and so is every formula. Maybe your dogs digestive cannot handle chicken and the formula you used was chicken. I know we tried he high protein formula of natural choice for a while because my lab is soo active and he didn't really care for it too much, but Im not quick to blame the whole company. My lab just doesnt like the high protein formula. I swear by nutro, I will never feed my dog anthing else.

I would also like to adress some issues I have read in other peoples reviews about corn gluten. Corn gluten is the protein of the corn not the entire kernel which is the junk/filler you do not want in a dog food. For example people who are allergic to "gluten" are allergic to the protein in wheat and cannot digest this protein. However corn gluten for dogs who are not allergic is perfectly ok, it is not filler but just the protein of the corn. Now nutro uses a lot of rice in their food because rice is one of the most highly digestible grains. Because rice is soo easy to digest dogs eat less because they absorb the nutrients from what they are eating better. Again much like people who are allergic to gluten they eat a lot of rice and othe grains like quinoa because they can digest these grains, people who are allergic to gluten cannot digest their food. For dogs things like corn meal, by product (chicken head , feet & intestines) , sorghum and preservatives are not easily digested and can lead to many health problems. Therefore, dog nutrition is much similar to human nutrition, it is important to feed them high quality ingredients. If you look in any dog breed book you will find similar information.

For example in animal planet laborador retrievers it states " Fillers can include rice hulls , corn wheat, and even some appealing food items that are good for humans. Poor quality fillers, like corn arent digested by the animal and shouldnt be in food or at leas should be fifth or more down on the list of ingredients. Most dog foods have fillers, but premium pet foods (which nutro max, ultra and natura choice are ALL considered to be premium pet foods) have beter quality fillers. Poor quality foods might have fillers that came from sweeping the processing plants floors or from grains that were oo inferior to give livestock. Beware of dog food that contains artificial preservatives . These can cause hair loss, cancer, allegies, kidney problems, and many other condiitions. Artificial preservatives includ ethoxyquin, butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) & butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT). Natural preservatives include tocopherols vitamin e nd asobic acid vitamin c which are much safer for your dog"

Now, nutro does not use corn meal or any of the above preservatives. It is considered a premium pet food. You must also consider what the dog may have gotten into, remember dogs cannot have chocolate, onions, grapes , raisins, or artificial sweeteners.

Like every human every dog has their own quirks and issues. Each dog is going to react to different ingredients differently just like humans. Like some humans their are dogs who will eat anything and everything as well as those humans and dogs who have certain allergies like my dog and I. I stronly recommend taking everything I have talked about into consideration. I have dealt with my own dog issues and spent quite a lot of money doing it. Nutro was the only thingthat worked and has continued to work for me. It is an outstanding product and I will never use anything different.