The saliva test

Last year when melamine-spiked wheat gluten killed thousands of pets in the U.S.A., a list of pet food manufacturers was released by the F.D.A. What was interesting about that list was the fact that one or two manufacturers were producing multiple brands of pet food. Producing two or even three brands could be explained by a manufacturer wanting to produce an expensive specialty brand for vets to sell, a brand which in all likelihood contains little of the unhealthy content found in their other retail brands. But there can only be one reason for a manufacturer to sell more than two or three brands, and that is to dilute the brand awareness of competing manufacturers. (download the list and count the number of brands that Menu Foods manufactures)

I noticed that the brands we were giving our kids to eat were made by one of these multi-brand manufacturers, and I immediately began looking for smaller and hopefully more trust-worthy pet food manufacturers. I found a few. Unfortunately, they were all located in the U.S.A. without suppliers in Hong Kong.

Last week while we were in Vancouver (before the big snow hit), we had two days free to roam around. Between the snow and my wife's disinterest in heights and sports, there wasn't much to do except shop and drink coffee, which fortunately is what I had hoped to do anyway. The night before our second free day, I surfed the web and searched for coffee roasters in Vancouver. I found and was impressed by 49th Parallel Coffee Roasters on 4th Avenue.

The next day on our way to 49th Parallel, I spotted a Three Dog Bakery store. It must have been serendipity, because Three Dog Bakery is one of the manufacturers I was interested in last year. We went into the store and talked to the franchisee Corby who was extremely helpful and eager to help other Three Dog Bakery franchisees. Imagine our surprise when he told us that there was now a Three Dog Bakery in Hong Kong!!! We bought a small bag of Three Dog Bakery Chicken dog food, a packet of "oreo" biscuits and continued on to the 49th Parallel coffee shop (whose Epic Espresso coffee is great by the way).

Back home in Hong Kong, I found the Three Dog Bakery stores. I'm now feeding our kids both the normal Chicken pet food and the Reduced Calorie pet food (because three of our kids have unlimited appetites and need to lose weight).

With the brands we'd tried previously, one or two of the kids refused to eat except when they were starving. Another three of the kids waited a long time before beginning to eat. With the Three Dog Bakery pet food though, all of the kids like it. The biggest clue that this is good pet food though is the saliva left in the dishes; there's lots of it!

Dogs can smell so well that they can even detect flakes of skin hence their tracking abilities. It should come as no surprise that they can identify most of the ingredients that make up their food, and if that food is made up of slaughterhouse remains, sawdust, road-kill, and euthanised pets, then it should not surprise us if they balk at eating the food we give them. According to Corby and the Three Dog Bakery web site, the Three Dog Bakery pet food is completely healthy. Even the preservative is natural; it's rosemary.

There are currently two Three Dog Bakery stores in Hong Kong; one in EMAX in Kowloon Bay, and one in Happy Valley at the tram terminal stop. If your pets are not interested in their food, or if they're getting old and need food that doesn't tax their kidneys and livers, then give Three Dog Bakery a try.