Which Food is Best for Your Dog

 

Nutritional Needs

Life Stage & Lifestyle

Dry or Canned

Comparing Labels

Quality

Price Comparison

Look of a Healthy Diet

Good nutrition is as important to your pet’s health as it is to your own. But a pet’s nutritional needs are quite different from yours!

While a human diet should be high-fibre and low-fat, your dog and cat needs more fat and less fibre for energy and a healthy skin and coat, and good intestinal health. Even if you prefer a vegetarian diet, dogs and cats will not thrive on meatless meals. Dogs are best fed as carnivores because they have simple stomachs and short intestines that are ideal for digesting animal protein and animal fat.

Cats are obligate carnivores, meaning they must eat animal protein to get all the essential nutrients, such as taurine, necessary for good health. Dogs and cats also need carbohydrates for energy and fibre for good digestion.

How do you pick the right food for your pet?

Start by identifying the pet’s life stage and lifestyle.

Kittens and puppies, nursing mothers, and senior pets are examples of life stages. And each life stage has different nutritional requirements. All pet foods must state which life stage they are recommended for.

Nutritional needs also vary depending on lifestyle. A pet whose primary activity is guarding the couch doesn’t need as much energy as one who guards a herd of sheep. If you own a dog, another factor to consider is adult size: small, medium, large, or giant.

Finally, it is important to take into account any special medical condition your pet may have, like food allergies, that requires a special diet recommended by your veterinarian.

Once you’ve determined your pet’s life stage and lifestyle needs, you need to decide whether to feed dry or canned food.

Most dogs and cats thrive eating only dry food. Dry foods promote oral hygiene for healthy teeth and gums through abrasive action. Other pets, especially finicky eaters, enjoy canned food with its smooth and wet texture.

It’s important to remember that while dry food can be left in a bowl all day, canned food should be thrown away after 30 minutes if not consumed. Therefore, dry food is the best choice for busy people who are not normally home during the day.

Once you know your pet’s nutritional needs — life stage and lifestyle — and your pet’s preference — dry versus canned, you are ready to go shopping.

Ingredients are listed in descending order, according to weight.

Because dogs and cats need meat, it’s best to pick a food in which the first ingredient is an animal-based protein source, such as chicken and chicken meal, lamb, lamb meal, fish, fish meal, or egg.

These ingredients contain a full complement of essential amino acids, unlike vegetable-based protein sources, such as soybean meal or corn gluten meal.

Scientific studies show that using a combination of carbohydrates in the diet, such as maize meal or barley and sorghum, offers optimal carbohydrate digestibility and helps maintain normal blood sugar levels after a meal.

Scientific studies show that beet pulp — the material remaining after sugar is extracted from sugar beets — is an excellent fibre source and promotes a healthy digestive tract.

For a glossy coat and healthy skin, your pet needs fat in the diet. Good fat sources include chicken fat, fish oil, and linseed meal.

Pet food labels provide limited information regarding the nutritional value of the food because labelling regulations do not allow manufacturers to describe the quality of ingredients on the package.

A reputable pet food manufacturer will be able to explain to you their specific methods for evaluating and assuring the quality of ingredients used in their products.

When choosing food, the price on the bag, while important, is usually not the best consideration. Low price may indicate inexpensive ingredients, or ingredients that change as market prices fluctuate.

In addition, many lower-priced products have higher daily portions to provide the same amount of nutrition found in a high-quality diet. To get a better representation of cost, it is the feeding cost per day, not the total cost, that counts.

Therefore, when costs are analysed properly, high-quality pet foods compare quite favourably to other brands while offering outstanding nutrition.

• Strong, white teeth & pink, healthy gums
  
  
• Supple skin & glossy coat
  
  
• Firm muscles in legs
  
  
• Energetic, enthusiastic personality
  
  
• Well-formed stools with little odour