What's the difference between Science Diet Puppy and Science Diet Large Breed Puppy?

I have a new puppy and the Vet game me a free sample of Science Diet puppy. He's a GSD and is 41 lbs at about 5 months. I've seen Science Diet Puppy Large Breed as well. Is there a significant difference between the two or is it just marketing?

Some say the large breed formulas have more protein specifically for the fast growing large breed puppies.Beware, you'll get a lot of people saying SD is crap, that your vet gets kickbacks from the company, etc. All of it is BS. Most people don't use the dog food from the vet, so vets really don't make any money off of it. If you pay attention, you'll see their dog food doesn't move all that fast and stays on their shelves for weeks or months at a time. Just to let you know, despite what many on here believe, dogs have lived well and healthy on SD and other types of dog food commonly sold in grocery stores. Many of these same people who say the food is bad don't bother with healthy diets for themselves or their kids, but should you feed your dog something from the grocery store..oh boy. I've had many laugh when they tell me they don't cook, eat a lot of fast food, etc. But their dogs have to eat healthy, but not their kids.

Um, well, both are bad foods.Other than that, I believe the only difference is that one is larger than the other.

Both are pretty low quality foods, but large breed puppy foods SHOULD have LESS protein in them. But, because SD is such crap, the protein amount is still way too high and only slightly lower than the regular puppy food.With a GSD, you should be feeding a low protein food anyway. California Natural has an EXCELLENT large breed puppy food that you should look into.++Scratch that, it's Innova http://www.petfooddirect.com/Product/6684/Innova-Large-Breed-Puppy-Formula-Dry-Dog-Food

The large breed formula has slightly less protein (31.3% vs. 32%) and the large breed food has less fat (16.8% vs. 22.9%). I got those numbers off Science Diet's website, you may want to take a look because I may not have looked at the right "regular" puppy food. With large and giant breed dogs you need to be careful about high fat, high protein foods because you don't want your puppy to put on too much weight too fast as it can stress joints and cause a variety of problems later on in life. As some people have said above, Science Diet is a lower quality food. It's main ingredient is corn which is just filler. Also, they use beet pulp which has been linked to a number of issues like ear infections and allergies (there is some debate about this and I don't know enough to give you a definitive answer) If you can afford to bump your dog up to a middle to high quality food I'd recommend it.

Science Diet Large Breed Puppy:- 26% protein.- 0.5% phosphorus.- 0.7% calcium.- 8.5% fat.- 356 kcal per cup. (1 kcal, or kilocalorie = 1 food calorie.)Science Diet Puppy:- 25.5% protein.- 0.7% phosphorus.- 1.0% calcium.- 16.5% fat.- 375 kcal per cup.Those are the most obvious differences. Neither is appropriate for any dog, large breed or not, because Science Diet is an extremely low quality brand. I recommend that you read these unbiased analytic reviews:Large Breed Puppy - http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/dog_food_reviews/showproduct.php?product=1026&cat=allPuppy - http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/dog_food_reviews/showproduct.php?product=1028&cat=all

Where I work, Science Diet is our #1 dog food. It's very healthy and a very good choice. But if you have a large breed dog, it may get somewhat pricey after a while. You can also try Nutro or Diamond pet food. You can go to any petstore or even your vet and they will help you out alot. Don't try the grocery store brands (Beneful, Pedigree, Iams) they are not the best if you want your dog as healthy as possible.