Is Your Pet Eating Healthy

Anyone that has been following my blog has by now figured out that I think my pets are tops.  Along with having a pet that I love comes the need to take special care of it's health.  Each time we go to buy dog food, my husband and I can never agree on what dog food to buy.  Some dog food just seems outrageously overpriced and others are so cheap that I know it can't be made out of anything more than junk.  My husbands theory is "buy the cheapest out there."  However, my theory is that the cheapest dog food cannot be healthy, and I always want to spend a little more.  So how do you know which dog food is best for a pet?

My cousin has raised dogs most of her life.  When we adopted a dog from her back when I was a child, she told us to never feed our dog dog food that had by-products or bone meal listed as one of the first three ingredients.  Keeping that in mind even til this day, I cannot let myself buy my pets food with those ingredients listed.  However, I started paying closer to attention to the ingredients recently, and some of the more expensive dog food has one of those two listed right at the top of the list.  I have finally decided to research this and settle it once and for all.  For my sake at least.

According to http://www.callofthedog.com/healthydogfood.php and http://www.healthyfood4dogs.info/blog/dog-food-ingredients, any dog food that contains wheat, barley, and corn as the first of ingredients, have little to no nutritional value to a pet.  By-products are also not nutritional if given in large amounts like commercial dog food gives.  All commercial dog foods claim to be better than the other, but the truth is, all dog foods are still full of the same chemicals that could be harmful to a dogs health over time.  For a dog to technically be fed a healthy diet, one would have to prepare the pet's meal from scratch and make sure it is full of raw meats, and healthy veggies.

So, with all of this being said, I guess my husband may just get to start buying somewhat cheaper dog food than what I have been accustomed to buying.