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My Precious Pennies

I will be AWAY until late February as we do this moving thing...again.

Ginger from Attention Target Shoppers & Tricia from 1stopmom
will be holding down the fort in the meantime - thank you so much, ladies!

Friday, August 22, 2008

Pet deals update



Yesterday, I told you about 3 pet care deals: $5 off any Science Diet product, a 3.6lb bag of Kibbles 'n Bits from Jewel for $2.99, and a mail-in rebate for Nutro Ultra dog food. Well, I went out and took advantage of two of these deals, and here are some tips for you and your dogs to get the most "WOOF" (humans read: bang) out of your buck.

I bought the Nutro Ultra at Petsmart simply because it was the closest. There is nothing on the rebate stating you have to buy it at Petsmart, so if you can find it cheaper elsewhere, please let me know. After doing some calculations, the 17.5lb bag is the cheapest:
  • 4.5lb with $5 rebate: $7.20 after rebate - $1.60 per pound
  • 17.5lb with $10 rebate: $19.99 after rebate - $0.88 per pound
  • 35lb with $15 rebate: $33.99 after rebate - $0.97 per pound
If you do not currently feed your dog Nutro products, I would not recommend taking advantage of this deal because the savings is not worth putting your dog through a food switch for just one bag. If you were waiting to switch your dog's food anyway, go right ahead. Just to give you an idea of the meager savings, Chiploe's regular Nutro 40lb bag is around $0.98/lb at the commissary.

As far as the Science Diet food goes, I mentioned that I remembered seeing bags of food close to $5 for use with the $5/1 coupon. Well, I must have been dreaming or something, because everything I found was in the $12 or $11 price range. $6 for a bag of food is still not bad. But again, unless your dog currently eats Science Diet, this is not something I would rush out to buy.

The same also goes for the Kibbles n Bits. It comes out to $0.83, so it's not like you're getting free food as with the $4/1 Purina coupon and Walmart a couple months ago.

Just a word of the wise about doggies and food - if you are switching up their food, do it gradually. There's an actual scale out there about how many percent of which food you should give which day into the process, but that takes way too much time for me and I take this simpler route:
  1. Dump all of your existing food out into a trashbag.
  2. Empty your bag of new food into your container.
    Dump the trashbag of existing food back into the container.
  3. Stick your hand in there and stir a couple of times.
Naturally, their meals will gradually consist less of the old food and more of the new. Also, it's not the end of the world to sometimes throw a 4lb bag of different food in there. This is what I did for the month that I was getting free food from Purina and Walmart. I emptied the whole bag into the top of my food container and just mixed in really really well (I used Chloe's huge 4 qt bowl to shovel the food around).

Now, Purina is not the healthiest thing out there for them, but it won't kill them. Humans eat things that aren't healthy all the time (read: fast/junk food), and it's okay. It's not the majority of their diet, and anything that can make their 40lb bag of food last a bit longer is a god-send in this house.

If you wouldn't serve dinner out of Oreo Cookies instead of your regular scheduled meals just because Oreo Cookies were on sale, you shouldn't change up your dog's food in the same way. These pet food deals are great, but always, just don't turn off your common sense when being frugal.

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