The Patio Expert Pages

Any good pet owner can tell you that they love their pets and feel completely responsible for their health, happiness and well-being. In order to help them lead such good quality lives, many owners turn to the internet and other sources of dog information to learn about feeding, health and nutrition.

Many of the dog foods on the market contain by-products, fillers, and other ingredients that are of very little nutritional value to our pets. These contribute to the rise of canine diseases like diabetes. Can you imagine eating fast food for every meal? This is the human equivalent of many of these foods.

The very best thing we can do for our pets is to educate ourselves on pet nutrition. Dogs and cats, being carnivores, need to derive the majority of their protein requirements from meat sources. Thus, it is important to feed them dog food that lists more than one meat based nutritional source in its ingredient list. Turkey, beef, chicken meal, or similar ingredients are good sources, and better if they are listed mear the top of the list. This means that they comprise a large portion of the food.

Ingredients like animal by-products and corn based ingredients are not beneficial to our pets. Animal by-products can contain parts like bones, hair and teeth, and even factory waste such as oils, and bits of packaging. Corn and other grains also have no nutritional value to our dogs and provide only empty calories. These are usually used by pet food companies as a "filler", to lower the production costs of the food.

Adding a supplement to your dog's food is not necessary of the food already contains them. Many high quality foods such as lifes abundance dog food list chelated minerals in their ingredient list. Dog information on chelated minerals tells us that these are processed to be easier for dogs to process and are a good option for dog food.

Another option is to make your own dog food. Many pet owners are choosing to do this because it allows them to control exactly what goes in to their pets' food. Some owners even go the extra mile and feed their dogs and cats a raw diet that more closely matches what their pets would have eaten in the wild.

Whatever brand of food or manner of feeding you do choose, make sure you are armed with reliable dog information from informed sources. While these sources can be found in libraries and the internet, please remember that your vet is the best source of dog information.