Alrighty! There have already been a ton of questions so far and there are bound to be more. So here is a page that can answer the most frequently asked questions, with some extras added in to (hopefully) avert the rest.
Q. Why am I not getting any matches?
A. Short answer: add ingredients you do want.
Most of us are looking to avoid certain ingredients that make our dogs itchy. And the mechanics of the matching system will remove foods based on these preferences. If you want a percentage-based result, however, you’ll need to add a food item or two that will then provide a percentage of the ingredients the food does have vs. what it doesn’t relative to the ingredients that you’ve entered.
Q. What’s the difference between ‘Preferred’ and ‘Common’ items?
A. ‘Preferred’ items pull straight from your profile. This is the fast-track, one-step way to find food for your dog. Fill in the ‘wants’ and ‘don’t wants’ on your profile and these foods will be automatically laid out for you.
‘Common’ items are where you can tinker and hone down your search. Of course, you can do this with ‘preferred’ items as well, it is just a few extra steps. There is no link between the ‘preferred’ and ‘common’ on the app. The point of this is so that the user, you, can have a profile that is continuously updated with your dog’s preferences, and also be able to explore new combinations and food matches on the ‘common’ side as well.
Q. What’s up with the percentages?
A. First of all, if you can’t find these, click on a food item and then click ‘ingredients.’ This will show you a detailed list of the potential allergens and the estimate percentage of how much of food that ingredient is.
The percentages are rarely, if ever, going to equal 100%. Remember: dog food companies are not legally required to have the ingredients in the bag match what is listed on the outside of the bag. It is why they change their packaging so much. The ingredients are also listed by weight, which makes it impossible to know exactly how much of a certain ingredient is in the bag. As such, I am always going to overestimate how much of the ingredient is there. That means that there will be lots of bags of food where the percentages go over 100%.
There is also the issue of the percentage being much less than 100%. I cannot account for all allergens. There are just too many ingredients that various dog food companies put into the feed. I had to simplify and just take the top ~100 or so. If the percentages are less than 100% that just means there are other ingredients not listed that are not listed as common allergens.
Q: Do you differentiate between types of ingredients? A: The short answer is: no.
When developing Feed Right I had to decide early how nuanced I wanted it to be. Should it have everything? Or should it be ultra-streamlined? I couldn’t decide. So I did what I do best, packed Rambo in the car and went to most isolated place I could find. The answer came quickly.
I made this app the way that I would look at things for my dogs.
When I am looking at an ingredients list I could care less if it is chicken, chicken meal, or chicken fat, because my dog is allergic to chicken. The same thing goes for fish meal, tomato pomace, red and green lentils, etc. Instead of breaking down different forms of ingredients like chicken, chicken meal, or chicken fat, we group them together under the main ingredient name. This approach helps you quickly find foods that meet your pet’s needs without getting caught up in the specifics of ingredient forms.
Q. Does your page contain affiliate links?
A. Yup. Mmhmm. A thousand times, yes.
Q. Don’t affiliate links contaminate the message?
A. Usually, yes. But I constructed this app with that in mind. Feed Right lets you pick from a ton of different foods, then buy them online where they are (usually) cheaper. I am not really advocating for any one food or another. If any food is ‘featured’ or placed in a certain category, it is because either Rambo or another one of my dogs has preferred it and done well with it.
Q. Why aren’t the matches working for me?
A. The percentages of matches are based on how many ingredients you have listed are in the food.
Occasionally folks have trouble when they only add ingredients they don’t want. Try adding some ingredients you do want, like ‘bison’ or ‘apples.’ If that doesn’t work, you might be searching for a food that doesn’t exist. Try removing a few ingredients and see if that creates some matches. If neither of those things work, shoot us an email and we’ll troubleshoot.