It is important to exercise caution while planning your dog’s diet to help maintain his/her health. Very often, dog food may contain ingredients that can be very harmful for your pet. Such bad dog foods may contain ingredients that could be potentially dangerous for your dog.
Several dog owners prepare natural dog food in their own home to help protect their pets from harmful ingredients in bad dog food. Many manufacturers of cheap, commercial dog food, for instance, add ‘fillers’ to the dog food that increases its quantity but does not add to its nutritive value. Instead, these fillers may be poisonous food for your dog.
Such fillers generally include substances that are inedible and difficult for your dog to digest. These fillers may be cereal byproducts, straw, crushed peanut shells, weeds, cottonseed hulls and sometimes even feathers. You should therefore only purchase dog food of a reputable brand and avoid those that are cheaply manufactured. Several of these dog food ‘fillers’ may cause allergies and digestive disorders in your pet. Read the ingredients of any dog food you purchase carefully and avoid any that lists corn meal, corn or corn gluten meal. Bad dog food may also contain meat by-products that may be harmful for your pet. Meat by- products have a very low or sometimes no meat content and thus do not add any nutrition to your dog’s diet. They are generally processed from those parts of animals that are left over after all the meat has been stripped away. Such residual parts may include spleens, heads, lungs, hoofs, brains, stomachs, intestines and other parts that are unfit for consumption. In addition, many manufacturers may use the flesh of animals that are road kill, diseased or already dead. In these cases, the meat from which your dog food is prepared can become contaminated and is poisonous food for dogs. If your dog food label lists its main protein source as ‘meat’, then it should be avoided as this meat could be from any kind of polluted source. In addition, bad dog food may contain preservatives and artificial colors that may be harmful for your pet.
In addition to avoiding bad dog food, it is important to know what foods are good for your dog. Certain things that are acceptable in your everyday diet may be toxic or poisonous for your dog. For instance, table scraps is considered toxic food for dogs as it is not nutritionally balanced.
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