What type of food do you purchase for your dog? If you’re like a lot of people you really don’t put much thought into it. You figure a dog is a dog and for the most part they’ll gobble up whatever you put in front of them. I was like this. I was the kind of person that would focus on quantity instead of quality. When I went to the store I would get the biggest and cheapest bag of dog food there was. I never thought twice about it until my dog started heaving health problems that were attributed to the food I was feeding them (told to me by a veterinarian).
The reality is that most people just don’t know how to shop for good dog food. Well no more. The veterinarian gave me some good tips on how to do this and now I’m going to pass this information onto my fellow dog lovers. Here’s what you need to look for when buying dog food in order to make sure its top notch.
The dog food should have complete nutrition requirements met
If you’re the type of person that likes to feed your dog the same food every day, then its going to be important that they get all their nutritional requirements from this food. This was the problem I ran into with feeding my dog cheap low quality crap. Nutritional information should be listed somewhere on the label of the food. If you don’t know what your dogs nutritional requirements are then a trip to the vet might help to set the perfect nutritional regimen for your pet, assuming you can’t find dog specific information online.
Look for dog food that has whole meat or a specific meat meal as the key ingredient
One of the primary reasons dogs end up getting tumors or developing other health problems as they get older is because their being fed food with a lot of bad things in it. Does this mean you have to spend your money on expensive organic dog foods? Not really. What you do have to do is avoid options where there are a lot of meat by-products listed or ones where the meat is not even mentioned. These are dangerous long term.
Avoid big cheap bags of hard dog food
This is the mistake I used to make. The biggest, cheapest bags of hard dog food I could find is what I would always go for. I never even bothered to read what was in the stuff. Than I wondered why my dog was putting on so much fat rather than lean muscle. Well the reason was because I was feeding the dog a lot of grain, and not even whole grains. Big, cheap bags of dog food are the worst when it comes to this. Aim to go for some of the more expensive options in this case.
Purchase dog foods that make use of natural preservatives
If you want to get your dog the best quality food out there and protect their health, then stay away from options where they use unnatural preservatives. If you can’t find options where they use natural preservatives or none at all, then consider going to another store to look. Some natural preservatives would include tocopherols and ascorbate which are really just vitamins E and C. Stay away from dog foods that make use of preservatives such as BHT, BHA as well as ethoxyquin.
Your dog is going to be so much happier when you start feeding them good quality dog food. They’ll have more energy and you’ll be able to protect them from frequent trips to the vet.
