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.)
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! We have raised our Miniature Pinschers and our St. Bernard on raw food from the moment they were weaned. Many of our friends and clients have raised kittens and puppies on our raw food. It is always wise to talk with an animal health practitioner about supplements for very young or very elderly animals. 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. We do – naturally! In its natural form, taurine is found in the heart of the animal. The heart is our source of taurine. When taurine is listed as a separate ingredient (other foods, not ours), it is not being added in its natural state, it is synthetic. as 95% of the world’s synthetic taurine is made in China. With Amore, 100% of our ingredients are made by Mother Nature! MS asked: Do you ship to the US? I’m in Georgia and the website is telling me No. Barbara’s answer: Yes, we do ship to the US and work is being done on the website to enable ordering directly but for now, orders are taken over the phone at +1(778) 892-6673. We hope to have US shipping options available by end of August 2024. We chose not! HPP (High-Pressure Processing) is a method that crushes bacteria under 90,000 pounds per square inch of water. The problem is it crushes good bacteria as well as bad. One of our competitors uses HPP and has had recalls for both salmonella and listeria. We choose to start with high-quality human-grade ingredients, then gently process them in our own facility. Our ingredients come from farms and suppliers that supply local restaurants and grocery stores. We believe that when you start with quality, you don’t need to squish the food to crush the bad stuff! Two answers to that: First, does eating crackers or cookies keep your teeth clean? Just the opposite, I think. Second, have you watched your dog or cat eat? They don’t chew their food, they bolt it. What keeps your dog or cat’s teeth clean is the effect of the enzymes in raw meat. Raw bones also help and they provide real enjoyment as well. We have best before date of two years. Your dog will eat it long before then! I still have samples of the first products we made 13 years ago and they still look perfect! Going on an extended trip with your furkid? Bring lots of Amore – it packs well and will stay fresh! 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, Amoré offers 2 types of dog food with grains and 6 with none! Twelve years ago, I tried to remove the two foods that contained grains: Beef with Oats and Chicken with Brown Rice. Boy did I an earful from customers! In talking with them, I discovered that they wanted us to keep making them. We’ve found out that dogs that have trouble putting on or keeping their weight do exceptionally well with these formulas. The carbs help with keeping the weight on; I know from my own personal experience! Many of the pet parents I spoke with had aging pets or pets undergoing cancer treatments and this was the only food that helped their dogs. There’s no way to hide it – yes, it is more expensive than picking up a bag of dried pellets at the supermarket. The trade-off is in the increased health and longevity of your companion animal(s). Chewing on raw bones not only keeps teeth healthy but also helps to prevent anal gland problems. All these improvements in health mean fewer vet bills and less stress for you and your four-legged friend(s). So, yes, it costs a bit more but prevention is always cheaper than cure in the long run. 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! MEGA Morsels™, our cool air-dried food, are often referred to as freeze-dried. It’s not! We developed a unique method of drying our food. Our patent-pending process removes only water and retains the nutritional integrity of the quality ingredients. It also retains the texture of the ingredients. This allows you to feed our products straight from the bag or rehydrate, your choice! When you rehydrate our product, they retain their unique shape and texture. It doesn’t become porridge-like like some of the other brands. MEGA Morsels™ look like the real meat and vegetables that they contain. Not like the freeze-dried products that look like particleboard. You might be wondering why we have 60% meat while other brands have 75%. It’s because we use all cuts of meat from the whole animal! Our protein count is 29% vs. other pet foods of 12% We don’t load up with carcasses. This keeps our calcium/phosphorus ratio in correct proportion. Our fat is higher than theirs because meat has more fat than bone. Which are more nutritious?: 600 grams of whole roast or 750 grams of ground-up beef? First, if we aren’t available in your pet store – sorry about that! We focus on making our food available directly from our kitchen via our storefront/kitchen in Burnaby or via online ordering right here on this site. It’s easy and secure to order online and if you’re new to our food, we offer a free trial (just pay $5.00 for shipping) with a variety of recipes to share with your furkid to see what they like (probably will devour all of them!). You’ll also be able to see the quality of the food yourself in dry form and when you rehydrate it. The only thing we add is kelp. Everything else you need for a healthy dog comes from the human-grade ingredients we use. If you need to supplement it should be on the advice of your medical practitioner. 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! Although we have modified the outside of our companion animals – size, fur, ears, tail, etc., inside they still resemble their wild ancestors. The 50 years we’ve been feeding our pets commercial dry and canned food, is a drop in the evolutionary bucket. By feeding them cooked, cereal-based and rendered animal protein diets (kibble), we deprive them of the natural good health they are meant to derive from the enzymes in raw meat. These enzymes help in the digestive process and allow natural cleansing, thereby providing a hostile environment for parasites as well as preventing the obnoxious smell that many of our companion animals acquire. Frequent bathing won’t get rid of that smell – it’s coming from the inside and it will disappear with a raw diet and lots of raw bones!
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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.
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