My personal favorite is Innova EVO, but it can be hard to find. Other good brands are Solid Gold, Natural Balance, Nutro, Canidae, and Eagle Pack. There are many more, but these are the brands that are the easiest to find. My dogs are on Innova EVO, Solid Gold (when Innova is not available -- we have to buy it out of town), and Natural Balance though they aren't on kibble much anymore as I have switched them to a primarily home-cooked diet (and boy do they love it!!)

The "do not buy" list is as follows (again, there are more brands but these are some of the more common ones): Purina Beneful, Purina Dog Chow, Purina Pro Plan, anything Purina, Science Diet, Royal Canin, Eukanuba, IAMS, Ol' Roy, Alpo, and Pedigree.

The best thing you can feed your dogs is raw food. It can be very inconvenient though and that is the reason my dogs are not on it. As soon as I can switch them to it I will, but they do get occasional raw food. If you're interested I can point you to some websites with awesome info on it.

The sure-fire way to tell if a food is good or bad is not by the brand, but by the ingredient label. You do not want a food with by-products, corn, soy, or wheat. You also do not want food that lists the meat as "poultry" instead of saying "chicken" or "turkey", because just saying poultry doesn't tell you what the source actually is. Another thing you want to look for is the meat without the word "meal" attatched to it. You want meat to be the first ingredient on the label, although if Chicken is the first ingredient on the label you need to move it back a few because it is primarily water if "meal" is not on the end of it.

Do not be fooled by what your vet tells you is a good food. I work for a vet and I can tell you first hand that we sell Science Diet and occasionally prescribe it but my bosses will be the first to tell you that it is a horrible food. But, they still love Purina. Nutrition is not discussed much in vet school, so veterinarians don't know too much about it (though you would think you could trust them with this kind of stuff, huh?). If you just keep researching on the internet you will find lots of websites with facts and tidbits about dog food.

To answer your question, yes, an 85 lb dog is a "large dog" but don't buy into the "large breed" dog foods. The only time when a large breed should be fed differently is in his growing stages (up until around 6-8 months for a Lab) and all they need is less protein (about 22-23%) so that their bones don't grow too fast.

I hope I helped (and made sense ). I'm sure others will be able to mention a few things that I've missed.

Oh, and welcome to Pet Talk! I have two Labs myself, Nova and Luka. I also have a German Shepherd/Pit Bull mix named Mandy. You can see them all in my signature.