Healthy Dog Food Choices

Making healthy dog food choices is easy if you know what to look for. There are many different types of dog food on the market. The ingredient list is on all dog foods. As with human food, ingredients are listed in order of the most ingredient first. Since dogs are carnivores, you want to choose a dog food with meat first, not corn or another vegetable or filler.

All makers of dog food will tout how healthy their brand of dog food is. The real test of reason comes down to how much of the dog food is meat and how much is fillers. Most kibbles contain corn or some other form of "junk" which is coated with a substance to make it taste good to the dog.

Dogs, like humans, need good food to stay healthy. Even though a dog food seems wholesome, it may not be for your particular dog. Dogs also have allergies and sicknesses that can be partially controlled by the food you feed. Choosing the proper dog food can lengthen the life of your dog.

There are many types of kibble and canned foods to choose from, as there are other diets (raw and cooked). Kibbles can be divided into groups---those containing mostly vegetable meal and by-products (poor quality dog food), those containing many good ingredients, but are still filled with fillers and top-end dog foods that contain mostly meat products. Meat meal and other meat-by products should be avoided when choosing a healthy dog food. If the meal is identified (i.e. lamb meal, chicken meal, fish meal), you can be assured that the meal is processed meat from that particular animal, and not a mishmash of "whatever" from many different animals. This is important if your dog has allergies or intolerances to a certain protein.

Once you change your dog's diet to a better kibble or to another diet such as raw or cooked, give about two weeks to notice changes. If you cannot figure out what your dog is allergic to (itching for reasons other than fleas, ticks and dirt, runny nose), you will need to feed only one protein at a time. Feed a food with only chicken for two weeks. If the dog stops itching or is not itching as bad, you will know that chicken is okay for your dog to eat. You can then add a food with pork or another protein. If the itching starts again, you will have found the food that your dog's system does not tolerate.

Look for foods that do not contain anything labeled as by-products, corn gluten meal, any type of "digest," BHA and BHT, preservatives, sugar, cellulose, any type of bran or flour, oats, peanut hulls, soy, wheat and corn. These ingredients are used as fillers and most of them are unhealthy choices for the dog.