Orijen Original Adult Dog Food

You should move your dog onto Orijen Adult when they are fully grown. Orijen advise the following regarding this:
Generally, a dog’s breed size will determine when they are done growing, usually somewhere between 10 months to 2 years. Here’s a general guideline for when different dog breed sizes reach adulthood:

• Toy or small breed dogs (under 20 lbs) 9 -10 months

• Medium breed dogs (20-60 lbs) 12 – 14 months

• Large breed dogs (60 lbs +) 16 – 24 months

It is recommended to keep your dog on a puppy food until 12 to 18 months old, depending on the size of their breed. At 8 months old I would advise buying the puppy version.
Unfortunately we cannot supply sample bags of this food, I advise buying the smallest bag (340g) first to try if your dog can be fussy.

If you want a wet food then Nature's Menu should be suitable. The kibble size of Orijen is not large but this is not of great importance for most dogs. Usually dogs should be encouraged to eat larger kibble and use their teeth, which can keep the mouth cleaner and healthier in fact

Generally you get what you pay for with dog food. Iams and Royal Canin are well established manufacturers and there are a lot of dogs which seem to do extremely well on their diets. However there is a move away from these traditional cereal based diets towards higher meat and fish content, with vegetables instead of cereal as a filler. It appears that these diets may indeed be better for dogs, though in fact most dogs can do pretty well on most diets. Our current recommendations for the best diets are Orijen, ZiwiPeak, Lily's Kitchen and Acana, but scientific evidence on this topic is still lacking.

Your dog might benefit from a low protein diet, though he would not live long on a protein free diet. He has to have some. Most dogs do better on a high protein diet in fact, such as the Orijen diets. I wonder what is the nature of the "sludge" in your dog's urine. Is there a proper diagnosis of a medical condition? What is genuinely the problem here? There are lots of different types of solid debris which can be found in urine, and they have different causes and different treatments. Diet often plays an important role, but sludge in the urine is not enough information to know what to do. If you can get back to us with more information, we will be pleased to try and help.

Biologically appropriate is a way of saying that the manufacturer think that the range of ingredients is a much better match to what nature intended dogs to eat. It has become commonplace for most of the food we give dogs to consist of cheap cereals, even in the better quality commercial foods. Dogs can digest them very well and enjoy eating them, but they are not a natural food for them. Glycemic index is a phrase used more in human nutrition, which grades different foods on how quickly they can be digested and absorbed and then increase blood sugar levels. It is widely believed that the more slowly they are absorbed, the better. Rapidly absorbed carbohydrates cause a sudden spike in the blood sugar levels, which is associated with obesity and diabetes.  Orijen attempt to produce a food which is naturally better for dogs and this is how they market it. There may be other problems associated with this type of food. It is much higher in protein than most commercial foods and that renders it difficult to make into a kibble (biscuit). However it does seem to be genuinely the way forward in canine nutrition (feline too) and lots of other manufacturers are now copying the idea. We think it probably is a healthier type of diet for many dogs.