The Right Choice Of Dog Food | Fast ESA Letter
Choose Best Dog Food
The right choice of dog food is as individual as a breed’s size and shape.
And once you narrow down what type of food you want your dog to eat, there is still the matter of either obtaining it (homemade or raw diets), or selecting the brand that will best fit your dog’s needs.
Fresh Pet Dog Food
A diet based on fresh meat and bones is one of the most controversial dog topics still argued about today.
Using the theory that dogs in the wild would eat raw fowl and small animals as a steady diet as the basis behind this diet choice, owners feed their dogs a mixture of raw, meaty poultry bones and vegetables, with a variety of other meats added in for variation.
Patience and a large freezer are two must-haves for this diet, even if you aren’t creating the food yourself.
Since it’s far cheaper to buy meat in bulk, you may find storage a problem, and your human family’s dinner might have to compete for fridge and freezer room. Before embarking down this road, you’ll have a lot of reading to do, both in books, and online. Our article on the BARF diet is an excellent starting point.
You don’t have to become a canine gourmet overnight though. If you aren’t the type to sink your fingers into raw meat, you can buy freeze-dried and frozen entrees for your dogs.
Gourmet and Home-made Dog Food
You can make your own dog food, using supermarket ingredients, or you can order it in for him. There are a number of small “kitchen” located throughout North America that make actual meals with meats, vegetables and fruits, and sell them in frozen packets.
Making your own does have the added assurance of knowing exactly what goes into your dog, but achieving a healthy balance of nutrients is tricky. Too much, or too little of something important could have disastrous health repercussions.
Dry Dog Food
Available everywhere, dry dog food is the most popular type of dog food around. Its quality ranges from really good with wholesome, human-grade ingredients, to “I can’t believe they call that food”. As with many things, you get what you pay for, and top-quality kibble can be frighteningly expensive to the new dog owner.
Semi-Wet and Canned Dog Food
Like kibble, the canned varieties of food vary greatly as well. Most are sold as a wet alternative to a dry flavor, but cans are usually made with more “true” ingredients, like chicken, liver and beef chunks, but it also consists of a lot more water than actual, solid food. Nutrient for nutrient, canned and dry dog food are generally pretty equal, but canned dog food is expensive, and your dog needs a lot more of it to meet his nutritional needs.
Semi-wet dog food is often sold in single-serving packets. While the convenience factor is nice, these foods are often high in sugars and preservatives, making them less than ideal to feed on a regular basis.
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