Dog Training Review

There are all types of dog food ratings and comparison charts and reviews you will get comparing one commercial brand to another, analyzing crude protein content, calorie values, ingredient sources, and so on.  There are two things that are never mentioned, however:  ingredient definitions and comparisons to home made dog foods.  Why not?

One obvious answer is that it can be difficult, if not impossible, to match a commercial brand to “home made” because of the broad range of possibilities for home made dog foods; there is no one standard home made dog food recipe.  And there does exist some truth in this.  Another not so obvious answer is that a lot of these reviews are commissioned through the manufacturers themselves and they are not going to put something in the review or comparison that makes them look bad.

If you read the ingredients lists on cans of pet foods, one ingredient that you will see time after time is “meat by-products”.  Do you know what that is?  It 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 these contents. It doesn’t include hair, horns, teeth and hoofs.  Sounds appetizing, doesn’t it?

Should you be buying a can of “Beef Delight” for your Fido and it contains meat by-products, you’d expect those by-products to be beef, but you could easily be wrong.  The definition says derived from mammals, which means they could be pigs, goats, any mammal, not just cows.  They can also be from “downer” animals, animals that are sick or dying just prior to slaughter.

You would not eat this stuff yourself, so why feed it to your pet, who’s a member of your family?  Yes, it requires some effort and time to make your dog’s food yourself, but when you do, you’re certain exactly what’s in that food.  You control the quality and you control the nutritional content.  You’re certain exactly what your dog is being fed.  That’s more than will be said when you read those dog food ratings.