Got a question? Ask Barbara!
Barbara is Amoré’s president and she has decades of experience going back to when she ran Vancouver’s Animal Control program to over a decade of making premium, wholesome raw cat and dog food and treats. So if you have any questions about our food, your furkids, the pet food industry, pet nutrition or any topic you can think of, ask here and she will personally answer. And if she doesn’t know the answer, she’ll do her best to find out or will tell you she doesn’t know! Think of her as your BarbaraGPT.
Click on each to see answers or use the search. Can’t find an answer – ask Barbara by submitting a question with the form on this page. (Include a photo of your furkid if you’d like us to be able to include it when we post your question and Baraba’s answer.)
Barbara’s answer: One one the great things about our food is you can rehydrate, but you don’t have to. I depends on how much water your dog drinks on his own. If he’s not a big water drinker, rehydrate. If he drinks lots of water, then no need to! Personally, I feed my dog straight from the bag. He’s 26 months old, VERY energetic, and drinks a lot of water! There is a lot of advice on the internet, much of it nonsense! One of my favourites is that dog cookies are good for brushing a dog’s teeth. To me, that’s the equivalent of me telling people to brush their teeth with cookies. The best thing is nature’s toothbrush, raw bones, yak milk chews, and the enzymes from raw meat. I give Dusty a a raw chicken neck or yak milk chew. They keep him busy for hours and his teeth sparkly white. If you find stuff on the internet and you want a 2nd opinion, I’m here! I’ve been making this food for 18 years and in the industry for 20. Money has never been my objective, the health and well-being of our four-legged companions is my goal. No. Salmon poisoning is a yearly occurrence in the Pacific northwest when dogs eat the decomposed salmon that have spawned in the river or are lying on the banks. The organism, Neorickettsia helminthoeca, is a parasite found in the entrails of the fish. A dog would have to eat or lick the guts to become sick. Symptoms are fever and bloody diarrhea 5 to 7 days after exposure, and these are easily treated with oral antibiotics. If left untreated, it can be fatal. Yes, you certainly can AS LONG AS THEY ARE RAW! Cooked bones splinter and can be dangerous but raw chicken bones are great. They clean teeth and aid with digestion. You can often find bargains on chicken necks and parts at the grocery store. Freeze them and bring them out when you want to feed. Most dogs adapt to the raw diet with no difficulty but it is always a good idea to go slowly, especially if your dog has any digestive or bowel problems. It shouldn’t take more that a week to switch your dog over to the raw diet. If you examine these stools closely (and what conscientious dog parent doesn’t?) you will notice that they have little bumps on them. These little bumps empty the anal sacs every time the dog passes them, thereby eliminating the stench, discomfort and cost associated with clogged sacs. MF’s full question: I live in Saskatchewan. I used to feed Vintage dog food. My dog loved it! Unfortunately, the store I go to is no longer carrying the product. I’ve tried changing my dog to a new food, but she doesn’t like it and won’t eat it. I was looking for food on the internet. I came across your company and food. I’m comparing the label on an old bag of Vintage and see that the ingredients and guaranteed analysis are the same as your food. Did you used to manufacture Vintage Dog Food?? Barbara’s answer: Yes, we were the manufacturers of Vintage. Vintage has always been our recipe and process with their label. Unfortunately, we no longer make food for the distributor as there wasn’t enough profit in it for them. As with all grocery prices, our’s have gone up and we had to pass on the price increases! Our products for dog and cat food/treats, are the same as what you bought under the Vintage brand and are all available online, delivered direct to you. We have a much more extensive range of products than they used to carry. Our dog foods come in seven different formulations; five single proteins and two blended. We carry 1 and 5 pound bags, with discounts on 10, 15 and 20 pounds (multiples of 5 pound bags). Each protein has matching treats! We’ve recently developed a line of squares! They come in double beef, buffalo or chicken liver; all are made with real liver and LoveBites! They are easy to carry and can be broken into very small pieces. ALL our products are still only 100% human grade, real meat, fresh vegetables, extra virgin olive oil and kelp. The general formula for raw food, for average activity level & age, is 2% of body weight. With our air-dried food we remove 75% of the weight when removing the water. So take the dry raw food amount and multiply by 25%, which is the amount that remains after the water is removed. In your case, this is how I would calculate how much to feed: 60 x 2% x 25% = .3 or about 1/3 of a pound. – Barbara Kayla’s question: Hello Barbra, I have a 34lb dog. He is 6 years old. I was wondering how many servings are in a 20lb bag of Mega morsels. Thank you for your help, Kayla Barbara’s answer: Thanks for your email. John, my webmaster, using his dog Maya as a test subject, figures a 5# bag of food lasts his 35# dog about 3 weeks. He does admit to adding an extra treat and people food here and there! Going by John’s calculations (and mine!) a 20# bag of food should last about 3 months. This might be slightly more or less depending on current weight and activity level! Added note from John: I picked up a pack of 32 OZ containers like these (got mine at the gr Also here’s a photo of my little Maya! An adult dog should be eating between 2% and 3% of his body weight daily. Puppies start out at 10% of their body weight in 2 or 3 small feedings per day and gradually adjust to the adult requirement of 2 – 3% in one meal. Full disclosure, I posted this FAQ myself, not as an answer to a visitor’s question as I learned of an article Susan Thixton wrote on www.truthaboutpetfood.com where she looked at the past 3 years of recalls and found that raw was by far the least problematic and that dry (kibble) was the leader in recalls with almost 70 million pounds recalled over a three year period ending Oct. 2023. I thought this was worth sharing on my Ask Barbara. I am constantly told that raw pet food is dangerous and full of bacteria and pathogens, at least that’s what people told me their vet told them. I have always maintained that if you start with good ingredients and handle them properly, these problems rarely exist. Read the article here! It might change your mind about a few things! You might want to share with your vet! Happy reading! Cheers, We’ve been saying it since 2005, heat and processing destroys the nutritional value of ingredients. We’ve finally been proven right!! In a recent study conducted by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers conducted an experiment to determine the amino acid digestibilities and true metabolizable energy values of four different pet food formats (raw frozen, freeze-dried, fresh and kibble). The scientists published their results in the Journal of Animal Science. A little bit of background regarding Amino Acids. Results of the study found that: If that’s what they say about raw and freeze-dried, what would they say about MEGA morsels®? MEGA morsels ®, are our air-dried raw dog and cat foods. Using a proprietary process, high quality ingredients are air-dried without using heat. The result is a high-quality food that retains the integrity of the ingredients, INCLUDING the amino acids! At the same time, it is a shelf-stable product that does not require freezing or special handling. Benefits of raw, convenience of kibble!© Best of all, DUSTY/RUBY/ROVER/FIDO and MORRIS/PUSS/FIFI love it! Amoré Pet Foods, we feed the pickiest pets! He will probably throw it up. I am always finding bits of bone regurgitated by my dogs. Dogs are much more likely to choke – even fatally – on slippery chewed pieces of rawhide and pig’s ears. The raw bone from a young, healthy animal (the reason we sell only free-range and organic bones) will not splinter. However, remember never to cook them. A cooked bone not only splinters into sharp pieces but also actually leaches calcium from the animal’s body. If you notice a sudden change in our products, please notify us immediately. There are many steps between the factory and the retailer, and we want to make sure that you’re getting the very best quality products when you take them home! So email us with any questions or concerns you may have about our foods. This question title has been edited for size. The original question in full is: My dog has high liver enzymes. Amore is on the list of Susan as good quality. My question is which are the ones that have the lower fat which may be better for my dog? Barbara’s answer: The lowest fat in our products is kangaroo. When we open the boxes, we are always astonished at how lean the meat is; no fat is visible! My recommendation would be to start there. If you’re looking to rotate proteins you might also try the Salmon & Whitefish. We use wild pacific salmon, low in fat and high in omega 3’s. Proteins to stay away from would be lamb and beef. They both tend to be on the fattier side. We used to have 40% meat in our dog food and 60% meat in our cat food because we encouraged people to feed their companion animals raw bones every day. Unfortunately, not everyone feeds bones so, as of September 2003, our dog food now contains 60% meat and our cat food contains 75% meat. This corresponds to the guaranteed analysis on our website and printed on our labels. We continue to encourage the feeding of raw meaty bones to cats and dogs as this helps promote healthy teeth and gums and prevents anal sac problems. Any excess Calcium in this raw form will just be pooped out! Meat and fish ONLY begin to smell when they’ve begun to rot. Our meat and fish are so fresh that they have no odor. If you visit our factory, you’ll find there’s no bloody or fishy smell even though we’re processing huge quantities of raw meat and fish. Nowadays, pollutants in the environment are causing more and more cancers in our dogs and cats. Beta-carotene is an anti-oxidant known to be effective in the fight against cancer and orange vegetables are extremely rich in beta-carotene. At Amoré we don’t like to add anything to our food that doesn’t come in its natural form. Rather than crushing vitamin tablets and adding them to the food, we prefer to juice our vegetables and add the pulp for fiber and the juice for vitamins.
5
0
2
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
ocery store) and find they work perfectly for making a 6-meal portion using 300grams dry (filled tub) and then water up to the top of the food. As one gets down to the last portion, I make a second and rotate tubs so there’s always some fresh and ready. I had to figure this out for traveling and ensuring I was bringing enough along, or if leaving her with a sitter.
4
0
1
0
Barbara and Dusty 1
0
Yes! And it’s not just my opinion (and the opinion of the many thousands that swear by raw food from their experience with it) now that it’s been proven by science.
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
