We first met Shelby at a Petsmart adoption event hosted by the Inverness Animal Shelter. She was so quiet and friendly, we thought she was perfect! When we first got Shelby around 8 months ago, we brought her home from the shelter and she was too calm... she would just lay on the couch doing nothing, dozing off all day, and then rolling up into a ball, I knew something was wrong. Long story short, after a loooong weekend taking care of her, it turned out she had intestinal worms! Poor thing didn't eat or drink water and I was forced to give her Pedialyte because I was so nervous about her getting dehydrated. We called the shelter to see if they had any advice on how to deal with the situation. They told us to bring her back and that they would give her all the medicine she needed and wouldn't charge us. At this point, I wouldn't have cared if they charged us, I just wanted her to get better! After 3 shots, some wet food (which she ate right up!), and two weeks worth of medicine to give her, she was as good as new! Although many dogs have suffered from worms before (and they're easy to get rid of by the way!) and the majority of dogs have a small amount of worms present in their body (their immune system is able to keep it under control to the point where it doesn't hurt them), the nugget seemed to be extra sensitive when it came to digestive issues.
Now, don't get me wrong... I LOVE a good deal, but a lot of times, I have seen couponers that simply buy what is cheap without really considering the quality of what they're buying. I love to get a good deal on things that are not (for lack of a better word) complete and utter shit. After going through finding every way possible to trick the nugget into taking her 2 weeks of medication, I swore I would nourish her well to get her into her tip-top shape. And so my quest began to find the nugget a decent doggy food. After going through about 5 different brands, I FINALLY found a brand she loved AND it was NOT complete crap! (insert happy dance here) We found the Wellness brand of dog food and it is AWESOME! We bought her the small breed variety and she loved it! She literally ate it down in 15 seconds flat... it's not necessarily good that she ate it so damn fast but it was good that she loved it that much! At the shelter we had gotten the nugget from, she was fed wet food. Wet food is 10x more palatable for pets due to the high moisture content in the food compared to dry kibble. So after seeing her sniff the other brands and walk away only to return and eat her dinner when she was absolutely starving, it was nice to see her eat the Wellness on her own free will :-)
Along with quality usually comes a higher price tag, this is where the couponing comes in, woot woot! A lot of people buy the crappy brands of dog food simply because they can't justify or just can't afford spending 3x more on the better brands which I completely understand. Being an engineering student with all sorts of bills to pay in addition to tuition and books and only an internship as an income source, I definitely didn't have the extra cash to pay for the higher quality doggy foods. After some research, I found some great deals for the nugget!
My goal was to stockpile enough doggy food to last the rest of the year. The nugget eats about 5 lbs of food a month which is typically the size of the smaller doggy food bags, so I decided my goal was to attain around 6-7 small bags with an expiration date of sometime in 2012. Mission accomplished!!
At Petsmart, they are having a sale (May 22nd - June 19th 2011) and included in the sale is Wellness and also Petsmart's own new brand of food called Simply Nourish. There is also this new organic and all natural line of doggy food by Castor & Pollux that I had heard about and found some coupons to try it out.
Here is my shopping list: 5/31
- Adult lamb Simply Nourish 6lb bag (1 @ $9.99 ON SALE!!)
- Adult chicken Simply Nourish 6lb bag (2 @ $9.99 ON SALE!!)
- Castor & Pollux Ultramix chicken 5.5lb bag (1 @ $13.99)
- Castor & Pollux Ultramix lamb 5.5lb bag (1 @ $13.99)
- Nylabone Dog Toy (1 @ $2.99)
- (3) $5/1 any Simply Nourish dog food bag
- I asked a sales associate for coupons and he gave them to me, make sure you ask them too!
- (2) $10/1 any Castor & Pollux Organix or Ultramix dog food
- Castor & Pollux posted 5,000 free coupons on bricks.coupons available for print until they ran out- limit 2 prints per computer
- (1) $2/1 Nylabone puppy toy
- Get Nylabone Coupon HERE
- (1) $2/10 PetSupermarket printable coupon
- Sign up on the PetSupermarket website to get their newsletter- Petsmart accepts competitor's coupons! I forgot to use this one but you can use it when you go!
Here is my shopping list: 5/30
- Wellness Super5Mix 6lb bag (2 @ $11.99 ON SALE!!)
- Simply Nourish adult dog food (2 @ $9.99 ON SALE!!)
- Wellness 13.5oz canned dog food (6 @ $2.39)
- (2) $3/1 Wellness bag of dog food
- mambosprouts.com
- Also sign up for the Wellness newsletter for special offers HERE
- (2) Petsmart Coupon- Buy a 4-6lb bag of Wellness and get 3 free cans (tearpad- exp: 5/30)
- (2) $5/1 Simply Nourish Petsmart Coupons
- (1) $2/10 PetSupermarket printable coupon
Total Outcome: 51 lbs of dog kibble, 6 cans of dog food (13.5 oz) and 1 nylabone dog treat for a grand total of (drumroll please...) $47.52!!
That's enough to feed my nugget for the rest of the year and these bags don't expire until April 2012! Success!
Now I realize that many of you have much bigger dogs and I'm sure they would eat through this stockpile super quick and may still opt to buy a cheaper brand... keep in mind the quality of the food! Read the ingredients....some of the ingredients of the cheaper brands may scare you. I think of the cheaper foods as junk food. I'm sure it tastes delicious (anything with more fat is always yummier, i have to agree) but I wouldn't want to feed my dog junk food every day. Anything in moderation should be ok :-)
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