Whats yo dawg eatin?

Today, I have dog food on the brain.  Let me tell ya a little story.  I worked at a store that sold dog food. They sold other stuff too, but dog food is what brought a lot of our customers in.  We sold several different kinds of dog food.  It was so much more expensive than what I had always bought for my dogs at Wal Mart, and at first I was extremely skeptical.  But, after they educated me on what I was selling, and after I began doing research of my own, well, let's just say I've never looked back.  Good dog food is so important.  And there are SO SO SO many bad kinds out there.  Why is is that we obsessively look at the labels on our food, but we never look at the label on  our dog food bag?  I never had before.

Go to Wal Mart, Target, or any grocery store, and pick up a bag of dog food.  Seriously, I double dog dare you to do it.  What is the first ingredient?  What are the top 5 ingredients?  I bet anything, in no particular order, the first five ingredients will include corn, chicken or animal by-product, and wheat.  And possibly some kind of gluten something or other.  I even dare you to pick up a bag of...SCIENCE DIET!!  Yes, yes, I know.  Veterinarians sell it, so it HAS to be good.  Guess what folks?  That's just not true.  Vet's get a kick back from Science Diet for selling it in their clinics, and that's the truth.  Veterinarians are not nutritionist, and believe it or not they actually don't know THAT much about nutrition, so they don't always know what is good and what isn't.  Science diet isn't any better than Ole Roy.  (The only exception is if your vet prescribes a prescription science diet food for your dog, and I would still be leery). 

Now, does this sound good to you?  Do you know what chicken by-product is?  It's basically what it says it is:  the by product of the chicken.  It's everything BUT the nutritious meat.  It's beaks, feathers, feet, organs, etc.  If beaks and feet are so healthy and filling then why aren't they in more of OUR foods? (McDonald's chicken nuggets being an exception.  Hahaha, sorry!)  And do you know how much nutritional value that corn has in it?  Well, it's not much if any.  Corn is a cheap filler, bottom line.  The dog foods in these big "box" stores, even stores like Petco, all have preservatives in them.  They sit in a warehouse for 6 months before they are on the shelf.  They are filled with all this junk, and then most of us feed it to our dogs.  WHY?!  We want to eat healthy, don't we want our doggies to eat healthy, be healthy, and live a long life? 

Let me tell you some of the biggest things that I noticed after I switched to a quality food.  Yes, it's more expensive, but it's more FILLING, so they literally eat about half as much as they would normally eat.  They go potty less.  I don't know about you, but I am more regular when I eat nutritious foods then when I eat fast food two times a day.  Their "waste" doesn't smell as bad.  Honestly, it doesn't.  And their hair or coat will look so much differently! 

Having said all this, I know that depending on where you live, some of these good doggie foods can be really hard to find.  Google it.  There is a place in Jonesboro that sells some really great dog food.  Hollywood Feed.  They just opened not to long ago and I'm soooooo glad they did.  Even some of the feed stores sell some really great food.  It's worth looking into :)