Hello there. I was forwarded a facebook post about people having issues recently with Taste of the Wild. Their dogs have had bad diarrhea, vomiting and lethargy, and the food having an adverse reaction to the liver. Usually I don't jump on the bandwagon, but since all 3 of mine are on TOTW, I wanted to do some research. I found a lot of negative info on the consumer affairs website https://www.consumeraffairs.com/pets/taste-of-the-wild.html

So my question is, has anyone heard of this issue, or experienced it? It has gotten me concerned enough to consider switching foods. I went on dogfoodadvisor.com and did some research and Victor grain free seems like a good choice. Has anyone used this food? TOTW has 4.5 stars, but this one has 5 stars and zero recall history.

I am not sure if I am over-reacting or if I should really switch. I would hate to do nothing and then have them get really sick.

Some types of Victor is a good food. If you do switch I wouldn't be worried about it's quality or my dogs having issues. As far as issues with TOTW, I feed it and haven't had issue. I am going to be buying a new bag today so if it's an issue with a recent batch I should know pretty soon. I feed the Pacific Stream flavor and not the others and I do wish when people complain about these sort of things they would say what flavor they are feeding so we can tell if perhaps that particular flavor is the issue. I've been feeding it for over a year now and never had a problem with upset belly or them snubbing it.

I haven't had any issues either and I have been using it for almost 5 years. When I looked through all of the FB comments it wasnt particular to one flavor or batch. One comment from someone in the industry said that TOTW plants have different plants, and this seemed to be the one out of California, and their Missouri plant would distribute to the midwest. So if this is an issue, maybe it won't affect us since we are in IN.

I tend to go at food in if my dogs like it and they haven't had issue with it then I'm not going to switch them until there is a problem. You've fed a long time without problem. That's a pretty good track record and I probably wouldn't worry about it, especially if it does seem to go back to one plant rather than a certain flavor.

I belong to a lot of groups, and other breed specific forums and have read this several times in the last few months. I know of one girl complaining and she is in Pennsylvania, so I haven't a clue on if it is a specific manufacturing plant. The only thing I have seen that has held common in each of the complaints has been that it is High Prairie formula or the Bison flavor. Like Jenn I have been feeding the Pacific Stream formula for over a year and TOTW for almost 5 years now with out issue. I have also heard of issues with 4 Health, in which TOTW manufactures certain flavors of their food as well, so indeed it could be a specific batch from a certain locale.

Victor is a top rated food, haven't seen anything negative for any of the flavors, no recalls. My only thing negative about Victor for me anyways, some flavors contain grains, most flavors contain chicken (can't feed my gsd she is allergic to chicken), and I do believe they all contain rosemary, which I try to avoid, or feed only treats (so limited exposure), since rosemary can contribute to seizures and my husky girl is prone to seizures.

I will continue with TOTW until a recall has been issued, my gsd is allergic to chicken, eggs and flaxseed and my husky is allergic to grains and I avoid rosemary, and quite frankly the Pacific Stream is the only flavor that I can feed both of my girls, with out jumping up to Acana or Orijen, which neither is in my budget.

I usually won't react when I see comments like this but the number of people complaining did concern me. I know people like to jump on the bandwagon and/or blame the food, when it could be a million other reasons there dogs got sick.

I checked out the different types of Victor food, and they do have a grain free formula, which is what I was looking at as a replacement. It's not as pricey as some of the others. I would have to check out the rosemary ingredient since I have an epileptic dog as well.

Jason, yep that is why I mentioned rosemary to you, I remembered that Yukon has epilepsy. Some people really believe rosemary can contribute to it, so I do avoid it as much as I can, sadly most foods today carry it in the formula. In most groups I do recommend Victor over TOTW, unless an animal has a certain issue, like allergies or prone to seizures. I will for now stay on TOTW, and maybe the Pacific Stream for now would work better for you vs switching foods, I haven't seen any complaints to that specific flavor.

Thanks, I heard about the rosemary before but forgot about that. I used to give them Pacific Stream, but switched to Wetlands quite a while ago. Now I just go between the Wetland and the Sierra Mountain.

One of the comments I read about the TOTW "problem," particularly since it seems to be related to the High Prairie which has 32% protein, is that it could be related to people changing to TOTW and continuing to feed the same amounts as on previous, much lower protein foods and thus, it is a too much protein issue. All of this is conjecture. I was having fine results - I only changed to the Chewy, American Journey because it seemed about the same quality and was cheaper. But, it has way more calories and even cutting the amounts, I am having a problem getting Ami's weight down. So I've now cut the American Journey half and half with a Wegman's house brand of grain free that only has 319 calories per cup. Unfortunately, the protein is only 25% and the fat, I think, 15% so not sure what I'm going to do. Maybe going back to TOTW and adding green beans for my boy who looks for 2nd breakfast, 3rd breakfast, morning snack, afternoon snack, 2nd dinner and his tablespoon of canned whippy cream movie snack...Its especially an issue in summer when his exercise goes to almost zero due to heat. Though at the moment, he is exhausted having romped through the wee hours with Archer. In the rain. And the mud.

Yeah, I am starting to think it is just people blaming other things, and less of it being an actual problem with the food. I started on high prairie, and they didn't do that well on it, so I switched over to pacific stream and it was much better.

I did contact TOTW thru a fb post of mine asking if they were to recall any of the food or if there were serious issues. They did reply, which is crazy since mine wasn't the only post yesterday asking pretty much the same thing. Anyways, they told me there would be no recalls and that any issues people were having needed to contact them, and they would respond case by case. They reassured me that there was no issue at all with any of their food. Hopefully that is that and the rumor mills will stop.

Yeah I saw that the pet supply company talked to TOTW and they said there were no issues with the food. Seems this was just blown out of proportion and went viral.

I do remember when we first got Ami and I was transitioning of Iams, I called diamond to get some samples.  I wanted to try extreme athlete.  Their veterinarian spoke with me and said "no". Unless my dog was actively sledding, the food would make him sick with the high protein fat levels.  He recommended their chicken formula instead.  Unfortunately, Ami wasn't keen on that and it was about that point that I noticed his poop had the same cracked corn coming out that went in so I went grain free.

I've been feeding Taste of the Wild Pacific Stream for 5.5 years with no problems.

We have also been feeding TOTW for over 3yrs im sure and we just got a new flavor, think the foul one and so far so good. we order from chewys.com

never an issue, i can switch proteins on the fly with them. i stick with fish and bird though. Sierra does not do well on the Sierra one, always got an UTI and that was the only think i could tie it to. stopped that flavor no more issues

I saw this on FB. TOTW still hasn't made a recall and says that they have tested and haven't found an issue. No idea what these people are running into. Still kinda sounds like rancid food to me in some instances. I'm not sure how TOTW is doing their testing. If they are testing returned bad bags or if they are just choosing random unopened bags to test. I still haven't had an issue and none of the stores around here are experiencing any returns based on actual adverse reactions to food. There's always people who return just because others did so that skews things a little. I will be getting another bag here before long and will keep feeding until I notice a difference in my dogs personally or they actually do admit an issue, which I really think if they find something they will admit an issue.

My thoughts exactly, Jenn. And a small specialty shop... How long have they had the stock. How well is it stored?

And as well,. The reports, vomiting after a meal. If there is pre-existing liver problems, eating may in fact be able trigger for vomiting. And then there is the power of suggestion.

Just got a new bag of totw high prairie last Tues. Finished the last bag Tues. Ami not eating, sniffs the food turns seat. He'll it if I hand feed but reluctantly. He was of and on through Friday morning, refusing cheese, his bone. Started working about a bad tooth... Which I couldn't find and then Thurs, Z'ev started picking at his food and reluctantly eating. So. Don't know if bad bag or viral but I bought a small bag of crave and they devoured it. So. Now considering a switch to victor hi pro plus for a bit