Dog Food - The Realities of Cheap Crap

Cheap dog food is just that - cheap. Cheap dog food can actually create problems rather than give your dog the proper nutrition it needs to thrive. Imagine if you're a carnivore and yet people kept feeding you vegetables and you became anemic because of deprivation of iron (Ok, totally off topic and incredibly far fetched, but...).

Remember, dogs were once wild. They ate raw meat, which is the best possible diet for your dog, but trust me, feeding anywhere from 2 - 3% of Rusty's body weight per day is NOT going to be cost friendly to my wallet. That's um, well, a few pounds of meat. So he can get an occasional chicken thigh, but that's about it. If you're interested in a raw food diet, I'll post more on that topic later as Rusty gets older and I begin to give him more raw meat. For now, here's a few websites that have a ton more information on raw diets - RawFed.com and Jane Anderson's Raw Learning Site.

Let's start with the basics. Look at the ingredient list. Are the first three products not by products of meat? If so, then you have a winner, if not, don't buy it. Back to the basics of dogs - what did they originally eat? Meat, keep the food as close to their natural diet as possible. I know it's crazy, putting this much time and effort into your dog, but trust me, they'll live longer and have much healthier lives. The better you feed them, exercise and train them, the longer they'll live and the happier you'll be.

What do we feed?

Old Mother Hubbard is the maker of Wellness products. At first I was little leery of purchasing more expensive food. We've always purchased Purina ONE... so why switch?


You'll notice Oatmeal is listed as the third ingredient and why would I purchase this if there isn't more meat? Well, because there's no meat by-products and oatmeal is a good grain if you're unable to feed grain free food which comes to my next point -

Grain free is just that - there's absolutely no grains in the dog food meaning more meat for your animal. Because it's all meat, there's more protein. Dogs under the age of 2, especially large breed dogs should not have a grain free diet. What happens is protein makes them bulk up so much that their bone structure can't keep up with the growth coming from protein. In effect, they'll have bone, joint and cartilage problems later in life. Not so good, eh?

So as you can tell, deciding what to feed your dog can be a conundrum. I suggest trying a variety of better dog foods and seeing which your dog prefers.

TIP: Gas and loose stools mean it's too rich, while you can tell the stench of anal glands and then they probably need to poo... so make sure you pick something that's not too rich to start off with!

ANOTHER TIP: Try dogfoodanalysis.com to compare foods!