This shop has been compensated by Inmar Intelligence and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. Thank you Blue Buffalo®​.  #BLUESierraDelta

What is the #1 thing that pet owners obsess over? What food they’re going to feed their precious baby! I thought that as a veterinarian, I wouldn’t do this, but man was I wrong! Sometimes I find that I put myself in these ridiculous unrealistic categories as if I’m not human, too. I started my journey working at a pet store as a sales associate. One of my prime functions was to know dog foods. With this information, I was to make recommendations to owners based on their budgets, desires, and furry friends’ needs. But honestly, I’ve never been able to make decisions based on just merit of the product alone. I’ve always been the type who would proudly stand behind a company based on both product performance and community outreach!

What do we feed our furbaby?

A long-time favorite of mine has been Blue Buffalo®​. In case you’re not familiar with them, they have the BLUE Life Protection Formula™​ and the BLUE Wilderness™ lines. Our puppy, GiGi the Chinese Crestie, has been eating the Life Protection Formula® since we adopted her! We have had her since she was about 11 weeks old. Made with the finest natural ingredients, this food is available in both wet and dry varieties; it features high-quality, REAL meats and proteins! More specifically, GiGi is eating BLUE Life Protection Formula™​ Natural Puppy Dry Dog Food with Chicken and Brown Rice. I saw it while shopping on Walmart.com and ordered it online for in-store pick-up later that day! It is important to me that her food contains DHA to support cognitive development, among other things! Antioxidants, wholesome whole grains, veggies, and fruit are also important to me.

Planning for the Future!

What’s even better about BLUE Life Protection Formula™​ is that I don’t have to switch brands of food types when she emerges into adulthood! It comes in adult formulas too; and when she is a senior, they have a food formulated specifically for that life stage as well. It contains glucosamine and chondroitin to support mobility and joint health, as many older dogs (and humans) need!

The food that we have chosen for GiGi’s transition into adulthood is the 6lb bag of BLUE Life Protection Formula™​ Natural Adult Dry Dog Food with Chicken and Brown Rice! I love the availability of bag sizes because GiGi is always going to be a small girl. So, it makes the most sense to get smaller bags of food to maintain freshness more efficiently! Since our furbabies spend the majority of our time together as adults, it’s important to have an idea of what adult formula you want to use for later on! This makes that food transition smoother and easier! Click here to add the product to your Walmart shopping cart.

If the BLUE Life Protection Formula™​ isn’t your jam, no worries! Blue Buffalo®​ also offers a variety of food lines, one of which is BLUE Wilderness™​. This line features a larger assortment of the more of the high-quality meat that pets were born to love; some of the protein-rich meat options are beef, bison, chicken, duck, and salmon!

The Partnership between Blue Buffalo® and Sierra Delta

Now that I’ve geeked out over the food line specifics that get me pumped both as a veterinarian and a pet owner, I want to talk about a partnership that Blue Buffalo®​ has with Sierra Delta that is truly near to my heart. If you have not heard of Sierra Delta, they are a program that helps to supply service dogs to veterans!

The deeper issue is this..

While we have deeply loved our dogs over the years, we weren’t ever able to enroll any of them into service dog programs due to the both the high expense and the lack of qualified training organizations in our area. This is one of many ways in which high administrative barriers leave many veterans both underserved and unaware.

My father and brother are both veterans and while they have been blessed to be able to come home to our family after finishing their service, they most certainly came back with different world views and new traumas to process while also integrating back into regular society. While my daddy served before I was born, my entire lifetime, we have always had dogs! I’ve felt that his bond with our four-legged family members has always been one built on sincerity and mutual trust and I truly believe that he is a better, happier person because of their integration into our lives. If you’ve never owned a pet, it truly is one of the most gratifying relationships that one can have!

 

Did you know that one 1 in 150 vets in need of service dogs are currently served? Neither did I, but I wasn’t surprised by this statistic, just disheartened. Sierra Delta’s mission is to increase support and access to more veterans by partnering them with trained dogs. If we can do this while also improving efficiency, we can eventually eliminate the critical shortage of service dogs for our military heroes! This will also curb the ridiculously high amount of euthanasias that occur in the adult to senior large dog populations in many shelter situations. Seriously, what is not to love?

To reiterate, Sierra Delta takes the veteran/dog relationship very seriously; and so does Blue Buffalo®! How? Well, I’m glad that you asked! Blue Buffalo® donates money to help to supply service dogs to veterans. For the month of November, $1 will be donated (up to $275,000) to Sierra Delta Service Dogs for Heroes with every purchase of any small bag of BLUE Life Protection Formula™​ or BLUE Wilderness™ dry food! You can learn more about this wonderful partnership here.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post and please feel free to check out a few others here!

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