OK, so maybe you don’t have time to make food for your dogs, at least not every day. The good news is that healthy, ready-to-serve dog foods are commercially available.
Frozen Raw Food
The healthiest commercial dog food is frozen raw food. Our article on raw food highlights the benefits of the raw diet.
Reputable brands of packaged frozen raw food include Bravo, Nature’s Variety, Honest Kitchen, and Aunt Jeni’s. These blends use meat from reliable sources and combine them in the right proportions with ground bones, organ meats, and veggies.
Adrian the Boxer at the food bowl
The major upside of commercial raw food is ease of use—just grab a portion from the freezer, thaw, and serve. In exchange, you lose some of the benefits of making your own raw food:
- The frozen packages are less fresh.
- You save money if you make your own.
- Your pups will miss the natural dental benefits of crunching through bones.
Canned Food and Kibble
Other commercial ready-to-serve options include canned food and kibble. Neither one is necessarily better – the choice depends on the quality of ingredients. Here’s what to check for:
- Every ingredient is natural: You can picture it in your mind.
- The food contains no chemical preservatives. Natural vitamin preservatives can do the job of keeping the food for a few months—and they are not linked to cancer.
- Real meat is the top ingredient, making up 50-75% of the whole. Different meats—chicken, beef, liver, etc.—will be listed separately, so add them up.
- There are no fillers such as corn gluten, wheat gluten, or rice protein concentrate.
- Any grains listed are in their natural form: rolled oats, barley, quinoa, millet, brown rice, and so on. Whole grains are better for dogs just as for people!
- The total number of ingredients is small: meat (possibly of a few different kinds), vegetables, fruits, minerals, vitamins, grains.
Also watch for the possibility that one ingredient, particularly corn, is listed in multiple forms. It seems to be present in small amounts, but the multiple forms add up to much more corn than is good for your dog.
Though we much prefer homemade food, we do keep kibble on hand for an occasional quick meal. We like Organix, California Natural, and Orijen. Since we don’t feed our dogs kibble very often, we buy small bags so we get a fresh supply every few months.
Where to Find Information about Healthy Dog Food
Dog Momma is just one of many sources of information about a healthy dog diet. Others we recommend:
- www.dogaware.com provides good health information, including advice on food.
- www.dogfoodanalysis.com rates commercial foods with stars; more stars means the brand is better.
- “Food Pets Die For: Shocking Facts About Pet Food” by Ann N. Martin will open your eyes. The companies that do the most colorful commercials, with beautiful images of meats and veggies and healthy dogs, sometimes use the least healthy ingredients.
- Whole Dog Journal reviews commercial food brands and blacklists those that are not good for your dog.
Take a Little Extra Care
If you use commercial foods all the time, you’ll need to take a little extra care to ensure your dog stays healthy. With any commercial food, doggie health food specialists recommend using a supplement such as Call of the Wild to provide additional vitamins and minerals.
If you go with canned food or kibble, you will need to budget time and money to brush your dog’s teeth and probably have them cleaned occasionally. Soft foods that are not fresh tend to accumulate between the teeth and in the gums. Dogs who eat meaty bones, by contrast, have clean teeth because they are using “nature’s toothbrush.”
Also, if you feed canned food or kibble all the time, you may become more familiar with anal glands than you’d care to. These little mysterious sacks just inside your dog’s tail (you know, where he goes #2) store stinky fluids when a dog eats processed food but not when he eats natural foods.
When full, or even partially full, anal glands smell terrible. Even worse, your dog may accidentally excrete the fluid while sleeping. To avoid the stink, you have to empty your dog’s anal glands periodically. That procedure involves sticking your finger up your dog’s butt, and it is as nasty as it sounds. We used to have to empty Logan’s anal glands at least once a week, when we were feeding kibble full-time—high-quality natural kibble, that is. Now that we serve homemade raw food, voilà –no more issues!
