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Dog Food

There are probably hundreds of brands of dog food available, and almost everyone has a different favourite. Stick to a high quality food. It may cost a bit more than cheaper brands, but your dog will need to eat less and will be much healthier. We feed and recommend Innova and Pinnacle.

The immense array of choices in dog food can be downright overwhelming to the average dog owner. As a result, in choosing a food many simply defer to their vet’s recommendation, or go with a brand they recognize from advertising, without taking the time to look into the differences in dog foods and why one might be a better choice than another. All dog foods are definitely not created equal!

For years we have heard the saying ‘you are what you eat’, and have been told that we will be far healthier if we eat more fresh fruits and vegetables, and eat fewer processed foods filled with sugar, preservatives, and little nutritional value. Why then do some people still not believe the same holds true for dogs? All commercial dog foods will claim they are ‘balanced’, and it is true that they are all designed to sustain life and not cause nutritional deficiencies, but is this ‘optimum health’? We all know people who have poor eating habits but claim they are healthy, and outwardly they might appear to be, but there’s little argument that the person who has made a commitment to healthy eating is indeed healthier overall, likely more resistant to disease, and can be expected to live with more vitality well into old age.

So, what does this have to do with choosing a dog food? – take a look at some dog food ingredient labels and you might get an idea. Compare the first 5 ingredients on two bags of kibble (ingredients are listed on dog food bags in decreasing order, so the bulk of the food is made up of those first few ingredients) – food A lists ground corn, meat and bone meal, wheat mill run, animal fat preserved with BHA/BHT (artificial preservatives), and digest of poultry by-products, while food B lists turkey, chicken, chicken meal, whole ground barley, and whole ground brown rice. Which sounds healthier?

Remember too that dogs generally eat the same diet day in and day out for most of their lives, so it behooves us to make that diet as healthy as possible for them. Think of it as an investment in their present and future health.

Another factor in comparing a dog food besides simply reading the ingredients is delving into the source of these ingredients. Many dog foods use ingredients (particularly meats) that are deemed not fit for human consumption – the “4D” foods: dead, dying, diseased, or debilitated – which are perfectly acceptable for companies to use in making animal feed. Many vets now believe that the dramatic increase in cancer in dogs is due in large part to the long term feeding of such poor quality diets.

Fortunately there are alternatives. Our own dogs are fed a combination of foods – Innova (manufactured by Natura Pet Products, website: www.naturapet.com), and Pinnacle (manufactured by Breeder’s Choice, website: www.breeders-choice.com), both high quality foods made using only human grade ingredients, minimal grains of good quality (many lesser companies use lots of poor quality grains as a ‘filler’), and natural preservatives as opposed to chemical preservatives. Both of these kibbles are manufactured in small quantities and packaged in freshness sealed bags to prevent oxygen from getting to the food and causing destruction of nutrients. A few other high quality foods are Wellness (manufactured by Old Mother Hubbard, website: www.oldmotherhubbard.com), Solid Gold, website: www.solidgoldhealth.com/ Canidae, website: www.canidae.com, and Wysong, website: www.wysong.net, though there are a number of other quality foods as well.

A couple of different, and excellent quality, foods are Essex Cottage Farms, website: www.efarms.cc/ and N-R-G, website: www.nrgpetproducts.com, both Canadian companies. Essex Cottage Farms is basically a dog food 'mix', to which you add your choice of meat and bake. We fed this to our old girl Caitlin during her last 6 months or so, as she had difficulty crunching kibble and was losing interest in eating. She did wonderfully on Essex Cottage Farms (we used ground turkey or chicken as the meat), eating easily and eagerly, and producing very solid stools. ECF also has specialty diets such as their hypoallergenic diet for allergic dogs and gastro diet for those with sensitive stomachs, and they have resulted in amazing turnarounds for dogs who were otherwise facing potentially a lifetime of medication. N-R-G is a dehydrated food. Simply add water and let sit for 20-30 minutes to 'rehydrate' it, before feeding. We have recenly begun trying N-R-G with a couple of our dogs (we're feeding the chicken formula) and they LOVE it and are doing very well.

Our puppies are raised on Innova Puppy kibble, mixed with Innova Canine canned food (with some homemade yogourt mixed in as well). Most of our adults are fed Pinnacle kibble, dry in the morning and mixed with Innova Canine canned in the evening. One of our older girls was on Innova Senior kibble for a while, dry in the morning and mixed with Innova Senior canned in the evening, and did very well. Pinnacle doesn't come in a puppy food, and I do prefer to start baby puppies off on a puppy food. Pinnacle does have an excellent canned food as well, but it was only introduced fairly recently and is a bit more expensive than the Innova, so we've stuck with the Innova canned for now.

Innova Canine kibble is highly recommended as it is an excellent food, and we did try some of our dogs on it, however we have found that for many dogs including our own it’s simply too rich or too high in calories. It is a top quality food that would be good for a picky eater because of the higher calorie content (it’s also highly palatable, dogs love the taste!), but some of our ‘chow hounds’ were not satisfied with the small amount that would sustain their weight, and others tended to have considerably softer stools while on this food, so they do better on the Pinnacle. The small amount of Innova canned mixed in with it for supper doesn’t cause a problem with them, and all our dogs are now eager eaters, as opposed to how they were with previous foods we fed, which were often greeted with a shrug and much of the time were left uneaten.

The one thing about higher quality dog foods is that you won’t find them in your local supermarket, since dog foods sold in supermarkets need a long shelf life, sometimes up to 2 years or more. That’s not to say high quality foods are hard to find, however. They may be available in some pet food outlets (in Canada many excellent foods are available at Global/Ryan's Pet Food stores), but more often they are available through a local distributor. Distributors for Innova and Pinnacle are listed on their websites.

Many people also like to add little ‘extras’ to their dog’s food, and this is certainly fine as long as these extras are healthy ones and you add them when you’re preparing the food and not after the dog has decided he doesn’t want to eat (this can encourage picky eating as the dog learns to wait for the ‘good stuff’!). Fruits and vegetables (some prefer to mash them in a food processor first to aid in digestibility), cottage cheese, plain yogourt, and hard-boiled eggs are just some healthy foods that can be added in small quantities to a dog’s food. You’ll find some of these foods included as ingredients in Innova and Pinnacle dog foods. We also have a doggy meatloaf recipe, which uses ground beef, canned tomatoes, beans, carrots, rolled oats, and milk, that we feed in small amounts primarily to pregnant and nursing bitches, but which all of our dogs enjoy as a treat from time to time.

For a time it seemed high protein were the buzz words, the higher the better it seemed (with some foods up to 30%!). The quality and digestibility of the protein is far more important, and for most pet dogs not under the stress of working, hunting, or heavily being shown, a level of around 23 - 25% is adequate. In recent years lamb and rice foods have become the fad, purported as a cure-all for skin problems, allergies, and digestive disorders. Initially it did work for food allergies, since the majority of dogs had never eaten lamb before so could not have an allergy to it. Nowadays with several generations of dogs having been raised on these foods there are many dogs developing allergies to lamb, and more exotic foods are being developed using venison, rabbit, etc. in a bid to help allergic dogs. Some dogs will do fine on it, but just don’t expect it to be a miracle food. These days more and more people, discouraged with commercial dog foods and their additives, chemicals, and processing, are cooking for their dogs, or feeding a raw diet. Many people feel that this is truly the healthiest way to feed, basically giving the dog much of the same ingredients found in commercial kibble but in a fresher and thus more nutritious form. Numerous books have been written on this subject, one of the better ones is Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide To Natural Health For Dogs and Cats (new updated edition). Publisher - Rodale.

One last point about dog foods has to do with dog biscuits. Even those who choose their dog’s food carefully often don’t take the same care in choosing a cookie or treat. Many commercial dog biscuits are designed more for appearance and palatability than nutrition, and as a result are filled with chemicals, dyes, sugars, and other additives. Again there are healthy alternatives in this area, including the Innova and Wellness biscuits, made with the same quality ingredients as the food, and Old Mother Hubbard biscuits which come in a variety of flavours. There are many other small companies that have come out with healthy treats as well, some of which are available in pet and feed stores. Another option is to bake your own biscuits. There are many different easy to make recipes to be found.