How To Choose a Healthy Dog Food

Choosing what food to feed your dog is an important decision. The food you choose will be his or her primary source of nutrition. In order to make the best choice for your dog and your budget, you must learn to decipher the information on the label of the dog food bag. All of this information is regulated by the Association of American Feed Control Officials, or AAFCO. Here are the things you need to look for on the label:

1. Know the percentages. The average dog's diet should consist of 40% meat, 50% vegetable, and 10% grain.
2. Look at the first 5 ingredients on the label. At least 2 of these should be animal protein. These include beef, beef meal, chicken, chicken meal, lamb, lamb meal, turkey or turkey meal. None of these should be animal by-products.
3. Know what grains are good for your dog. Rolled oats, barley, quinoa, millet and brown rice are all digested fairly easily by dogs. The grains that are not easily digestible are corn, cornmeal, soy and wheat. These are potential allergens and can cause your dog to have a reaction.
4. Read the Guaranteed Analysis and convert the percentages listed to dry consistency percentages. You must figure out the percentage of dry matter in the food. For instance if there is 10% moisture, that leaves 90% dry matter. Then, you must convert the other percentages to dry matter percentage. To do this, you must divide the percentage by the percentage of dry matter. For instance, if there is 90% dry matter and the protein listed is 26%, you must divide 26 by 90. The result of this is 28%. This is the actual percentage amount of protein in the food.
5. Know what ingredients to completely avoid. These include preservatives listed as BHA and BHT. These are not good for your dog and you should be sure that they are not listed anywhere on the ingredients panel.
6. Check your dog's feces. After about a week on the food you choose, go out and look at the feces. You should see no blood and no mucus. Blood and/or mucus in feces are a sign that the dog is not getting complete nutrition.

Keep in mind that expensive food is not necessarily the highest quality food. Personally, we feed our dogs a medium quality food and they are thriving. If you are on a limited budget, buy the best food you can afford and supplement the dry food with canned food. Check the canned food label to ensure that it is grain-free so that the dog gets sufficient protein. Lastly, remember, if you would not want to eat it, your dog probably does not want it.