Dog Treats Can Have Ingredients Harmful to Your Dog
Because we owners - and not the dogs themselves - are the ones choosing what our dogs eat and what kind of nutrition they get, it's up to us to know exactly what we're feeding them, and how it affects their health and well-being.
Dog food and dog treats make feeding our pets easier, but what's really in those cans and plastic bags? In most cases, sad to say, it's some of the worst things you could feed your dog. To know what your dog food is made of, read the label. The components are listed by weight, and the first few ingredients comprise what makes up the majority of the dog food.
If some of the first ingredients listed are meat by-products or grain by-products, avoid it if you can. Grain by-products in pet foods and dog treats will introduce a lot of carbohydrates in your dog's diet- as much as 70 percent of your dog food can be composed of carbohydrates, when a dog's natural diet should have less than 30 percent. The reasoning behind using these ingredients so much has more to do with the dog food manufacturer's profit margins than any actual concern for pet nutrition. These byproducts are cheap, and they act as extenders for the dog food- thus, the manufacturers get to produce more food, at a fraction of the cost. But it's your dog who pays for it in the end: digestive trouble, and obesity, and all the obesity-related health problems that come with it.
And animal byproducts aren't any better. What "byproducts" means is that this is the stuff that would otherwise have been thrown away: lungs, spleen, kidneys, brain, liver, blood, bone, and stomach and intestines from different animals. And the sources of these byproducts aren't even very regulated - they can (and have, in some cases) come from roadkill, or livestock that's been labeled 4-D: dead, diseased, disabled, dying.
So please- take the time to read those labels and understand what they mean. Find a premium dog food that can assure you that your pet is receiving only the best nutrition. There are brands out there like Wellness dog food, which produce dog treats and food made of mostly whole foods like human-grade chicken and lamb meat. It may cost a bit more than the cheap brands, but it pays off more: you'll have a healthy, happy canine companion.
Getting your dog some premium dog food may cost more, but will pay off because many of the cheaper brands have ingredients that are harmful for your pet. These brands have grain and animal byproducts, which have little to no nutritive value and can in fact cause health problems like obesity and maldigestion. Look for dog treats brands like Wellness dog food, who use only the healthiest ingredients like deboned lamb or chicken meat, so that your dog stays healthy.
Published June 6th, 2009
Filed in Family