A Diversified Doodle Diet; What we feed our Goldendoodles and Bernedoodles
What is the right dog food?
We live in a polarized time. It is so easy to reduce complicated choices into an either/or decision. Some of these things are easy to recognize and maybe just avoid at family gatherings. However, some dividing points are rather surprising.
For us, one of the most surprising debates is dog food; what you feed your Goldendoodle and Bernedoodle.
Do you feed your Bernedoodles or Goldendoodles kibble, grain-free, or raw? Should the big box brands be trusted, or should the boutique brands be trusted? Because there’s so much information out there, we wanted to share our approach.
The amount of information regarding the great dog food debate in approaching the infinite, and it can be intimidating and disorienting figure out where to start. At least, that’s how we felt as we began our journey with our Goldendoodles and Bernedoodles.
So when we began our research, we had two big values. We wanted some good, solid scientific evidence behind our choice, and we also wanted strong experiential evidence from Goldendoodle and Bernedoodle breeders who’ve been doing it a lot longer than us.
These values quickly eliminated a raw diet as an option for us, as it can be difficult to provide sufficient nutrients for breeding Goldendoodle and Bernedoodle sires and dams on a raw diet.
These values also brought us to a bit of a divide, because much of the scientific evidence lies behind some of the larger brands, such as Purina Pro Plan and Hill’s Science Diet. These companies have a significant amount of research behind their foods. Due to this, they’re heavily recommended by vets, and this is important to us.
However, many of our legacy breeder connections have experienced digestibility issues with these brands and their ingredients, leading to a less nutrient-dense food with a lot of filler.
Most of the legacy Goldendoodle and Bernedoodle breeders we’re connected to advocate for a “BEG” diet (standing for Boutique companies, Exotic ingredients, and Grain-free), primarily with brands such as Pawtree or Life’s Abundance. They swear their dogs are healthier and have significantly less digestive issues.
However, there’s been some scientific data correlating a grain-free diet with DCM (dilated cardiomyopathy; a heart condition that can lead to heart failure). To complicate this claim, different people - including dog food industry insiders - feel like this claim is not sufficiently supported by the evidence. Also many legacy Goldendoodle and Bernedoodle breeders have been feeding grain-free diets for over a decade, and haven’t seen one case of DCM.
To complicate the dialogue even more, there’s a conflict of interest with many of these boutique dog food brands, because they pay commission to breeder reps that sell their food.
There’s so much; it’s dizzying, and we felt torn.
The Diversified Doodle Diet
So what did we do for our Goldendoodles and Bernedoodles? We went with a middle way, what we call The Diversified Doodle Diet.
We are feeding our Goldendoodles and Bernedoodles a 1:1:1 blend, in which one part is Pawtree Salmon, Peas, and Sweet Potato (grain-free), another part is Pawtree Chicken and Oatmeal (contains grains), and the final third is Purina Pro Plan Performance 30/20 Salmon (also containing grains).
We view this as a way to hedge our bets on the side of our Goldendoodle and Bernedoodle’s health. The potential connection of grain-free diets with DCM is disconcerting to us, but we also value the experiential evidence from more experience Goldendoodle and Bernedoodle breeders. So we are striving to gain the health benefits of both, while also offsetting the risks of each.
Additionally, we feed our Bernedoodles and Goldendoodles a Core Longevity Topper “CLT”. This is a small amount of fresh foods that go on top of their kibble; less than 10%.
We supplement with probiotics to help with gut health, and a DHA Fish Oil supplement to help with brain and joint health.
We believe in this diet to the point that we’re willing to double our health guarantee to four years if our puppy owners feed this diet and keep their puppies from running on concrete/asphalt for the first year of life.
Our goal here at High Desert Family Doodles is to raise, breed, and nurture fabulous Goldendoodle and Bernedoodle puppies, and we feel that this is uniting approach for us in which we aren’t drawn onto one side of the debate or the other; where we are hopefully building a bridge throughout this approach.
