Mrs Doubleu’s Dad is a vet, so she was insistent that Jeff, our Bernese Mountain dog, be on Hill’s Science Diet.
A lot of vet’s seem to recommend that, probably down to good aggressive marketing by the manufacturers. IMO it’s not the best of foods, but certainly not the worst.
A friend who is a vet said that the amount of time they have to spend covering dietary requirements of our canine friends is minuscule, so unless they have done additional study in their own time, tend to fall back on Hills.
Kibble is a recent ‘convenience’ food. Some of the brands are good, others are pretty crap. Go back 30-40 years or so and you’d probably find that up to that era most dogs were fed on a diet of scraps, offal and leftovers
Despite stocking Hills, ours promotes a good varied diet, a ‘bit of this and a bit of that’ approach.
So our dog gets all-sorts from chicken frames (raw), blitzed veggie / fruit scraps, random meat (raw and cooked), veal knuckles, rabbit, tripe, heart, liver, venison bones, sprats, tuna etc etc.
Plus the odd handful of Country Value Greyhound in his tug-a-jug.
He does really, really well on it, and it works out very cheap.