Healthiest Dog Food.org

What’s the best dog food? Well that’s a question only you can answer based on how your dog responds to the food you feed him. Knowing that, there are several important tips to guide you in the right direction to finding the healthiest dog foods.

Wysong is our #1 pick, we always have it in our kitchen and most days this is the base food in our dog’s bowls!

Healthy dog food will be more expensive than most, if not all foods found in PetSmart or worse, in your local grocer. You don’t pay hamburger prices for a nice T bone steak so you can’t expect to pay for cheap ingredients and get top meats and healthy dog food nutrition.

Most dogs do fine on a dry kibble dog food. This is not the healthiest food for dogs because it isn’t the most natural dog food. But it is relatively stable making it easy to store and feed. It is less expensive, calorie for calorie, than raw, frozen or canned dog food.

People eat different foods because of tastes, allergies, variety and health issues. The same should be true for your dog. This doesn’t mean to feed your dog junk food! Feed your dog the healthiest dog food you can afford and don’t be afraid to switch it up and add fresh foods to the dry dog food. Read how to switch your dog’s food.

What to look for on the labels

Don’t let the package with pretty dogs and real foods make your decision. Read the ingredients instead of looking at the nice pictures.

The protein from animal sources must be at the top and be the first one or two ingredients listed. Animal proteins are more palatable and of a higher biologic value to your dog than the plant proteins. Since the ingredients are listed by weight the meat should outweigh the other ingredients and should be the first listed.

Animal protein sources must be named such as chicken, lamb, beef etc. Meat and animal proteins are low quality of questionable sources and origin. Be caution of animal protein meals labels simply as “meat meal” as this can be just about anything and a mix of very questionable sources.

The animal meal is cooked and dried muscle meat with a certain amount of bone, skin and tissue included. Animal meals are dried to about 10% moisture and contain about 65% protein. So you can see how using whole meats will not contain enough protein to be used as the only source of protein in a dry dog food. Whole meats have as much as 65% to 75% water with as little as 15% to 20% protein. Look for a mix of animal meals and whole meat if there are whole meats used.

Whole fruits, vegetables and grains are in most quality foods. They do offer many health benefits with their vitamins, enzymes and antioxidants. Look for the whole foods but don’t be alarmed if you see a few ingredients such as beet pulp, as these are considered fragments that are not harmful if they are lower on the label, meaning the amount used is small.

Organic ingredients are best for us and our pets. This is a benefit to the healthy dog food and could be a must for dogs with cancer.

Do not feed your dog foods made with Meat by-products or poultry by-products! The definition for meat by-products by the Association of American Feed Control Officials is:

The non-rendered, clean parts, other than meat, derived from slaughtered mammals. It includes, but is not limited to, lungs, spleen, kidneys, brain, livers, blood, bone, partially defatted low temperature fatty tissue, and stomachs and intestines freed of their contents. It does not include hair, horns, teeth and hoofs. It shall be suitable for use in animal food. If it bears name descriptive of its kind, it must correspond thereto. YUCK!

No sugar please! Dogs love sweets just like we do but there is no place for sugar in their diet.

No artificial preservatives please! Look for natural preservatives such as tocopherols (forms of vitamin E), vitamin C or rosemary extracts. The food must have some kind of preservative to keep the fats used in the food from turning rancid. The use of natural preservatives is a must but they will not keep the food fresh as long as their artificial counter part ones so don’t buy more food than will be used in shorter time.

No need for artificial colors! The use of food coloring is just for the people, dogs don’t care what color the food is. Did you know that some food colors are made from coal tar? Yep, it’s true. Read more here. http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/2007/09/19/the-7-wonders-of-the-food-coloring-world/

It is possible to feed some dogs a low quality food with no signs of problems. There are some genetically lucky dogs that can eat anything. But if your dog has allergies, ear infections, poor coat condition, chronic diarrhea or other health problems, we suggest you improve the quality of dog food.

It’s possible that you have never heard of the dog food brands we recommend. It doesn’t mean that these are highly specialized foods that are made for the top show dogs! The dog foods we suggest will be the Healthiest dog foods that we have found online and offline. And we feed our own dogs these very same foods!

Pet stores, grocers or pet specialty stores don’t carry these brands for several reasons.

The food is more expensive than the average Dog Chow or Iams  so the stores cannot mark it up for the larger profits. If they can’t make a profit, they won’t stock the food. The super premium natural dog foods will be found more often in the smaller pet boutiques or health food stores. And most often online direct from the manufacture.

Look at the beginning ingredients on a few of these labels to see how a poor dog food reads. Corn, soybean meal, beef meal, wheat mill run, animal fat (artificially preserved) and soybean seed coats and salt. Next one reads; corn, chicken by-product, corn gluten meal and animal fat. These are two well known dog food brands with excellent marketing efforts to push the pretty pictures and particle truths about the natural ingredients.

For more suggested reading:

What’s really in dog food?

Pet food labels

Start with these brands that we feed our dogs and recommend:

Wysong is our #1 pick, we always have it in our kitchen and most days this is the base food in our dog’s bowls!   The dogs love it and are doing amazing with all varieties. Much more for all pets and people too.

Doctors Finest Great ingredients for a varied diet.

Flint River Ranch Baked dog food. Shipping is included in price so you know what your total cost will be.

Sojourner Farms All Natural Pet Food For the people going raw, this food mix is a must with your fresh meat and water! Free shipping!

We are always on the lookout for great dog foods and after research and testing them on our dogs we will add them to our site. We never recommend a product we wouldn’t feed our dogs, even if the commission percentage is a boost to our income! It has to be great and a product we use before we will recommend it to you!

Archetype	Uncanny – Seafood	Uncanny – Pheasant & Fruit
Anergen	Growth	Maintenance
Nurture with Free Range Pheasant	Optimal Performance	Senior
Archetype Buffet	Synorgon	Canine Variety Pack
Feline Variety Pack	Uncanny Variety Pack	Vegan
Anergen – Canine Diet	Anergen – Feline	Au Jus Variety Pack
Beef Au Jus – 5.5 oz	Beef Au Jus – 14 oz	Archetype Burgers
Chicken Au Jus – 5.5 oz	Chicken Au Jus – 14. oz	Duck Au Jus – 14 oz
Rabbit Au Jus – 13.2 oz	Turkey Au Jus – 5.5 oz	Turkey Au jus – 14 oz
Venison – 14 oz	Gourmet Chicken	Gourmet Seafood
Gourmet Liver	Dream Treats – Chicken	Maintenance – 13 oz. can
Senior – 13.2 oz can	Stew In Gravy-Beef	Stew in Gravy-Chicken
Dream Treats – Beef	Dream Treats – Pheasant	Dr.’s Dream Treats
Uncanny – Beef & Egg	Uncanny – Chicken & Yogurt