Edie MacKenzie On Dogs

Posts Tagged ‘Commercial Dog Food’

Although you can get commercial food for your Golden Retriever, the ideal way to feed is to use a combination approach of both commercial food and fresh people foods.  Most commercial food is good for your Golden Retriever, although it lacks nutrients and vitamins that fresh food has.  Vets will tell you that fresh food is good, providing you don’t overdo it.  Golden Retrievers love fresh food as well, as they can smell it a mile away. If it smells good to them – they’ll want it.

Most commercial foods will offer your Golden Retriever great sources of protein and vitamins, although fresh food contains far more essential sources.  Chicken and meat for instance, have far more protein and minerals than any type of commercial dog food.  Fish is another great choice, as it contains a lot of the protein your dog needs to maintain a healthy brain.

All dogs are well within the capacity of staying healthy, although you need to provide them with the minerals they need.  Each dog is an individual, meaning that you can’t continue to feed him the same food on a daily basis.  Golden Retrievers love people food, and they also love variety.  What they need one day may vary the next, so you should always mix it up a bit and give them something different each day.

To be on the safe side, you should give your Golden Retriever a little bit of everything.  This way, he will get everything he needs with his diet.  When you design the diet for your growing Golden Retriever, you should always make sure to include animal protein.  This is very important for your Golden Retriever, as he has to have it.  Without animal protein, your dog will find himself literally struggling to stay healthy.

To keep your Golden Retriever healthy, it is very important that he gets quality nutrition.  Although quality nutrition is very important, you should never him eat so much that he gains weight too fast.  If you monitor his diet and know exactly what you are feeding him, he should remain in his weight class.  Sometimes this can be hard to help though, especially if your Golden starts to develop allergies to a certain type of food.

If you ever have any questions regarding the diet of your Golden Retriever, you shouldn’t hesitate to ask your vet.  Your vet could make some recommendations for you, even tell you the best type of commercial food for your dog.  Depending on his individual needs, what he requires may be totally different than what another dog needs.  As long as you keep your Golden Retriever on a healthy diet and make sure he gets the food he needs – he should grow to be a healthy dog with plenty of energy.

Giving your puppy good food, healthy treats, and the necessary supplements will not only increase dog health, but it will also affect his behavior and his ability to be trained to learn new things.

Every dog is different, and there are certain factors to consider when determining the diet program that will fit the needs of his growing body and dog health.

However, there are also general rules that owners must follow to ensure that their pets are getting the balanced food and supplementation that their bodies require.

For Good Dog Health Avoid Giving Your Dog Human Food

Most vets and breeders do not recommend adding table scraps to your dog’s diet. They will also likely tell you that the majority of commercial vitamin and mineral supplements that are available today are only a waste of money.

When you give your puppy human food, he will not only get used to eating that type of food, but the difference in the taste of human food and dog food will cause him to reject his own food.

He will become a finicky eater, affect overall dog health, and be more difficult to get him back to eating his regular food.

For Best Dog Health, Take It Easy On The Supplements

It is also not necessary to give your dog a separate vitamin and/or mineral supplement along with human food and his own food. The majority of supplements out there are ineffective and can even be dangerous to some level.

For example, providing your puppy with an extra calcium supplement is not at all beneficial. It doesn’t aid in bone growth, but actually does the opposite. In some cases, extra calcium in your puppy’s body can actually develop to certain types of bone problems.  Adding a combination of supplements is just as harmful to your pet because they can create an imbalance to his diet.

Keep It Natural When It Comes To Dog Health

Your puppy is better off with his own food, which is a good, commercial dog food specifically tailored to his needs (ask your vet for recommendation). In addition to the dog food, you may also give him a multivitamin such as Omega 3 oil and occasional liver tablets which, in my opinion, are one of the best treats you can give your dog. Omega 3 and liver tablets are available in most health food stores, pet stores, and online catalogs.

Other supplements to give your dog are natural, whole foods. A few examples of these are wheat grass, brewer’s yeast, bee pollen, and barley. These are foods that contain nutrients from nature and will not interfere with the nutrients in your dog’s diet causing good dog health.

Just a few years ago, feeding your dog was so much simpler compared to today’s nutritional advice and dog health necessities. I remember when my parent’s dog ate whatever the whole family would eat, including dessert! In addition to table scraps, he also ate commercial dog food. That dog had a happy life and lived well into his mid-teens without contracting any serious illness or disease.

Picking a commercial dog food was also easy back then. There were only a handful of brands to choose from and these pet foods all had practically the same ingredients, only varying in color and flavor.

Nowadays, there are so many varieties to choose from. Below is a list of some of the popular commercial foods available for your dog:

Organic Dog Food

Most dog food products found in the market today contain pesticides and other chemicals. If you want to give your dog food that is free of these chemicals, consider organic dog food. However, the term “organic” can be misleading, so read the ingredients carefully before making your purchase.

No Preservative or Natural Preservative Dog Food

Most dog foods contain preservatives in the form of artificial chemicals such as ethoxyquin, BHT, and BHA. These are added for two reasons: To prevent the food from spoiling and keep the taste lasting longer. Some dog foods, however, have natural preservatives like vitamin C (often listed as ascorbic acid) and vitamin E (often listed as tocopherols).

Before you buy a dog food with natural preservatives, be sure to read the ingredients first to make sure that the preservatives are actually derived from nature instead of it being artificially synthesized.

You may also buy dog foods that are free of any kind of preservatives. These products must be properly sealed in a cool, dry, bug-free place and used promptly to assure freshness.

Vegetarian Dog Food

Vegetarian dog foods allow vegetarian dog owners to exercise their dietary beliefs with their dogs. These foods contain all of the necessary vitamins and nutrients that your pet needs, so long as they are properly made. A vegetarian diet is also beneficial for dogs that are allergic to meat.

Raw Dog Food

Many dog owners believe that a diet of raw food is the healthiest way to feed their pet because this is the way wolves and other wild dog species ate. This belief has no scientific facts to value its accuracy. However, a diet of raw food can expose both you and your pet to dangerous bacteria such as salmonella and E. coli.

Therapeutic Dog Food

Therapeutic dog foods, along with necessary medical care, have been the growing trend in dog health today. It is only available through a veterinarian and is usually prescribed for cases of preventive treatment, as an after-surgery diet, or for certain health problems like food allergies.

As a kid growing up in a family full of dogs, I remember the old days when mom and pop used to feed our dogs any type of table scraps that we had from our meals; not acknowledging any degree of dog health.  And sometimes, the dogs would all have their meals prepared ahead of time. We ate all types of food and back in those days so did our animals, except for one major difference of today’s house pets – they didn’t eat a bite of commercial dog food.

Interestingly enough, three out of the four dogs we owned lived to the age of 18 and 19 years of age, with one dog reaching 21 years of age. And the only reason why the fourth did not hit these high numbers was because of bone cancer. Now our experience with these dogs does not negate any type of nutritional value that commercial dog food may provide, especially considering the leap in information and nutritional research that we have today, but it is a little ironic that standard human food did so well just a few years back.

Pet Food Advertising Has Brainwashed Us

A lot has changed over the past 20 or 30 years.  Most dog owners feel that feeding their pets commercial dog food makes the most sense.  They believe that high quality dog food sold in stores is not only the most convenient way to feed their animals, but it also is thought to give their dogs and puppies the best nutritional value offered, even better than human food.  They believe that this decision is the right thing to do.

You hear this sort of thing over and over again whenever a discussion takes place about dog food and dog health.  Just the other day I was discussing some dog tricks with my neighbor and the subject switched to what we fed our dogs.  One comment that he made which is quite redundant is that “I feed my dog ‘dog food’ because it’s for dogs. Why would I feed him human food?”  My neighbor goes on to display his sense of knowledge about nutrition for dogs by insisting that my way of feeding Charlie (my dog) table scraps was cheating him of the proper foods he needs for energy and growth.

Processed Food is still Processed Food

I realized that there was little chance of me convincing my neighbor of his falsely believed notions about proper nutrition and his dogs.  Try convincing one of these people that a dog and a human both need similar nutritional foods.  It’s not that easy. However, I did get across one point in which he understood and that was about processed food.

No matter how you look at it, or what you believe a dog should eat as opposed to humans, processed food is still processed food! This stuff is manufactured, which means it goes through various steps of processing, preservatives, and other additives before it hits the can and is packaged.  Every step that is taken to get this food to the store shelves reduces its quality and nullifies most of its nutritional value, degrading proper dog health.

With the rising concern for dog health, there are many different types of dog foods today. There are 3 types of commercially prepared dog foods that are available in the market today: Canned foods, Semi-moist foods, and Dry foods.

Canned Foods

This type of food comes in several varieties which ranges in quality as well as price. They consist of about 75% water and is mixed with assorted meat, fish, and cereal products. They are easy to prepare and dogs love them! However, canned foods produce low-energy nutrients, which means that you would need to give your dog a big serving in order to provide him with the required energy he needs.

If you have a large dog, you would have to double the amount of servings, which makes canned food a bit unpractical and on the pricey side. To solve this problem, consider mixing canned foods  with dried food.  The mixture will provide more energy for your dog and will also add volume to the food, thereby saving you money.

There is another kind of canned food that only contains meat, hence called “all meat canned foods”.  Similar to regular canned food, all meat canned food does not provide your dog with the proper amount of energy that his body needs. In order to get enough energy, you would need to give him large quantities of the food, although this will only produce an unbalanced diet. Therefore, all meat canned foods should also be mixed in with dried foods or even semi-moist food.

Semi-Moist Foods

This type of food has high concentration and only contains 15 to 30% water content, which provides more energy for your dog in less amount of volume than canned foods. Their ingredients consist of meat, cereals, vegetables, sugar, and fats.  They are easy for your dog to digest and he will surely love the taste. They come in a wide variety, do not need to be refrigerated, and many owners find them to be the most convenient way to feed their dogs.

Semi-moist foods are expensive and is loaded with sugar and corn syrup and therefore, should not be given to dogs with diabetes. In addition, these foods are also loaded with colorings and artificial flavors.  It is best to give your dog this type of food only on an occasional basis rather than his main source of diet.

Dry Foods

Dry foods contain about 10% water, providing high energy value to your dog. They are the least expensive of all the dog foods, they can be stored in bulk quantities, and they do not need to be refrigerated. This is why most pet owners prefer this to have a food for their dog and considerate it to be the most economical way to feed their pets.

On the other hand, the majority of commercially prepared dried foods contain mostly cereal and is very limited in the amount of protein that the dog requires. Consider mixing dry food with canned foods to give your dog a well-balanced diet.  Another alternative is to choose a brand that contain meat as its main ingredient, this is helpful in reaching balanced dog health.