Dog Food

When one of my dogs started to have health problems at the age of six, I got pretty serious about dog health issues. I don’t watch TV much anymore, if I have any free time I’m usually doing research to try and improve and extend the lives of my dogs.

People who are acquainted with me also know that I think the main reason for health problems with dogs is the commercial dog food. I have made it my purpose in life to educate people about the best dog food and strongly recommend homemade dog food.

In actuality, the majority of people will need to provide supplemental commercial food in addition to the homemade diet. This is the reason I take a lot of time with the best dog food topic.

One area of controversy that I encountered was the usage of meat by products in dog food. You’ll recognize this because a meat, such as lamb or chicken, will be shown with the word by-product attached.

So what is it and is it good for your dog? If you do research on the subject you will find two groups, one defends by-products as good, and the other saying it is toxic for your pet.

The answer is, it depends; we need to explore what it really means when we say there are poultry by-products.

"Poultry by-products consists of the ground, rendered, clean parts of slaughtered poultry carcass, including necks, beak, feet undeveloped eggs and intestines, exclusive of feathers, "except in such amounts as may occur unavoidably in good processing practices"The problem is you don’t know what is in a by-product ingredient at any give time. There is no standard that says there are so many feet and so many intestines or any consistency of nutritional value what so ever. The truth is none of this stuff is fit for human consumption.

There are some who will make the argument that because some of the by-product ingredients are what the dog would actually eat in the wild, they are fine for them to eat in a dog food. Even if this is the case it is tantamount to saying that because homeless people eat out of garbage cans, dumpster food is great for everyone else, too.

I want to feed my dogs the best dog food, and therefore I’ll be leaving the by-products where they belong and that’s in the dumpster and out of my dogs bowl.

Mike Considine has devoted a big part of his life researching commercial dog food looking for the best dog food for his two dogs. His top ten list points out how to pick the best dog food brands.

Do the big named brands of dog food make them the best dog food selection for your dogs? After studying the matter I’ve come to the conclusion that people are aware of a  brand not because it’s particularly healthy but because it’s a brand that can afford some heavy advertising.

Your vet, unfortunately, does not have the best dog food available for your canine.   Just because a dog food is sold by your veterinarian does not mean it is the healthiest food available.

Because my dog started to have Seizures, I started to research to find out how to pick the best dog food available to keep him healthy. I have learned more about how to decipher a dog food label and understand what all the ingredients are, than most people know about their own human food.

The more research I did, the deeper I entered the ugly world of commercial dog foods.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that I would have to learn some things about the Pet food industry in order to give my dogs the best dog food  that’s out there.

The laws are weak and the industry is basically self regulated, allowing deceptive wording on labels and fooling pet owners into thinking they are buying nutritional value where none exists.

The only law that even comes close to helping us pick the best dog food is the law that states ingredients must be listed in order of predominance by weight. If corn is the initial ingredient listed it is the largest component of the product regardless of what it is called.

Do yourself a favor and ignore the name on the bag and take a look at the ingredient list to determine what the food really is. After looking at the first few ingredients and rubbing your head, then you can look at the rest of the list which you’ll have no clue what the word mean. Yet here I am telling you the label is still the best place to learn what is really in the food.

As you start to look at ingredient lists, your going to see healthy sounding ingredients like dried egg products.  Don’t be fooled this particular ingredient is anything but healthy.  The truth is that what goes into dried egg products is not fit for human consumption, so why would we feed it to our dogs? When something contains chicken by-products is is not of the standard you would serve on your dinner table.

When you look at the listed ingredients of this item, you can figure out some of them, however it will be more difficult to identify the preservatives and vitamins as the names are less familiar.

This why I was happy to find during my research a very strict guide of what to look for on a dog food label, and this is what I use to find the best dog food, for my dogs.

With this guide I have been able to go through a list of 150 brands of dog food, and come up with the best dog food top ten list. It is very obvious once you compare the ingredient list of the 10 best dog food to the brands your Vet probably sells, that you probably shouldn’t be depending on your Vet for a healthy dog food selection.

Here is the best dog food list

In the past I’ve wrote many articles and blog posts on healthy dog food, but today I would like to talk more about everything else it takes to raise a dog.

There isn’t a day that goes by that some dog owner wishes they had an answer to simple questions like how to get their dog to sit, or how to prepare their dog for a trip. I know because of my dog’s health problems I wanted to know if there was a more natural way of protecting him from ticks and fleas without using chemicals..

Ever since my Beagle Copper started to have seizures I have been spending every available minute doing research. I admit I have focused mainly on dog food, but I have also found expert answers to questions like the ones above.

Finding answers on the information super highway is easy, but how do you know your dealing with experts? The wellbeing of our dogs depends on being able to trust what we find.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could call and interview experts in the filed for any questions we might have? You could call your vet every time you have a question, but do you really think they would continue to take your calls?

Most vets are not experts in things like training your dog, so they can’t give you good advice on this and many other question you’ll have.

The truth is good dog parenting starts even before you bring the dog home. You need good information on how to select the best breed for your family.

Because it is so difficult to find good answers to pet problems, dog parents usually just do the best that they can, this sometimes works out, but often it ends up being bad for both them and their dogs.

Sadly many reason people turn their dogs over to pet shelters is because they either picked the wrong breed for their family, or some other problem they didn’t know how to find answers to correct..

{Today I’m happy to say that I have found expert answers to all of these questions and more. I would be happy to share them with you and help you become a better parent to your dog.|There is no longer an excuse for not being able to finding solutions to any dog parenting question. There is expert help waiting to help you become a better dog parent.|The good thing about all my research is the fact that I have found recorded expert interviews for most any question you might have on becoming a better pet owner.|All my hard work has paid off, and I have now found a recourse of experts being interviewed on a host of dog parenting topics that continue to be expanded month after month.

Michael Considine has a love for teaching dog parents how to better raise their dogs. If you want to be a better dog parent check out dog book of the month club

Many pet owners are looking for the best dog food brands, because of the tie between food and health.Finding the best dog food brand should be as simple as reading the ingredients on the label.

You would think it would be that simple, but the industry uses words that are picked to confuse the pet owner.

There are many people telling us healthy food to eat, but it’s a lot more difficult to find good information on a healthy diet for our pets.

The problem is the pet food manufactories are allowed to use ingredients that are marked not fit for human consumption in their products. It is sad that in today’s world those who manufacture dog food can use low quality by product ingredients and due to government regulations give the brand high quality healthy sounding names.

One would assume that finding dried egg product as a listed ingredient in dog food would make it healthier. What it really means is egg shells of all kinds and other tissues that cannot be consumed by human beings, may be found in it.

I found a list of 68 ingredients while doing research for the best dog food brands, that if any ore founf on your dog food label; stop feeding that brand to your dog. 41% of these ingredients can actually be fatal, maybe not right away but they will shorten your pets life.

I have also seen a report done by an independent tester about the best dog food brands. I’m not allowed to print the report here, since it is copyrighted.

After analyzing most know commercially made dog food in North America they only found nine that were healthy enough to make the list.

The report also lists 27 well know brands that didn’t make the cut, and give reasons why not. Product brands such as Iams, Science Diet and Eukanuba were not included on the list.

This happens to be a supplementary report and there were six brands that have been deleted from the original list.
The report gives details about the pros and cons of every brand.

Based on the information I gathered during my study on commercial dog food, I have put both of our dogs on home made diet. But, at times, you may need some ready made food for them. Personally, I won’t endanger the health of my pets on the ground that I am idle and will neither prepare food for them nor buy them one of the best, healthy dog food brands available.

Also for more information go here:

Dog Food Recipes for a Healthier Dog
Save Your Dog with Homemade Dog Food Recipes.

While doing research trying to find the best dog food, I ran across a report that explained in detail over sixty ingredients found in many dog foods that should be avoided.