I try my best to take good care of my dogs. I bathe and brush them, keep a collar with ID tags on them, I play with them, take them for their checkups at the vet’s. And, of course I give them nourishing, name-brand dog food. I even buy good dog treats for them.
But I recently found out I’m killing my dogs! I can’t believe it – me, causing harm to my dogs. It’s not bad enough that I was occasionally sharing the cat’s treats with them, and boy did they gobble ‘em up, but I found out what I was doing was worse than the cat treats. I was buying the popular, name-brand dog foods that had the nice, natural packaging, and crap for ingredients!
In years past, I’ve had three beloved pets, precious members of our family, die from cancer. We initially thought it was the cell phone tower that’s close to our house. So, I contacted everyone in the world to check it for excessive radiation, but it all checked out okay. Hmmm. I thought and thought, and wondered what on earth the common denominator might be.
Then, I read a friend’s article on dog food and nearly fell out! I couldn’t believe what I was reading! I thought I was feeding my dogs a trusted brand of dog food, one that had been around for years and years, one I trusted. But instead of nourishing them, I was feeding them garbage, literally.
I’m going to share with you some of the facts that scared the daylights out of me, and what I’m doing about it.
I always try to buy things made in the USA. They’re better quality and trustworthy – or maybe not. Did you know just because it says made in the USA, where the dog food is actually made, the ingredients may have come from other countries? Those are the ingredients that contain poisons, metals, antibiotics and more.
That’s bad enough, but get this: dog food, and other pet food’s “beneficial” ingredients, (approved by the FDA) include dehydrated garbage, ground clam shells, and poultry – cow – and pig feces.
Other gross things I discovered from her article is that they can put other nasty things in dog food, such as what’s listed as “meal.” This “meal” can contains such horrific ingredients as: poultry beaks, hooves, hair, tails, and other yucky stuff.
So, after reading about all of these disgusting ingredients, I grabbed up the dog food, and cat food, out of the pantry and started in on the ingredients. Looks like there’s chicken first, then chicken meal. I guess that means possibly beaks and feet? Other decent sounding ingredients, like soybean, rice, beet pulp, and several others that sound like it would be okay for humans to eat.
But then, what about the chicken fat and “chicken flavor?” How can you have “chicken flavor” if there’s already chicken in it? Makes you go hmmm. And what’s that? Manganese sulfate? Copper sulfate? That doesn’t sound good at all, does it? Something that has metal in the name means metal in the product and that’s not going to go into my dogs anymore!
There are lots more in the list of ingredients that I don’t dare look up. Now my chore is to find dog food, and cat food, that has actual food products listed as the ingredients – with no beaks, metal, etc. Wish me luck on my search!
Until next time, Carol
PS – if you find any dog food out there that has natural, real food ingredients, please shoot me an email. I’ll share your findings.
And as always, I’d love to see pictures of your dogs, and learn a little bit about them and you. Send stories, maybe an article you’ve written, etc.to my email address.
Dog+Steak=Awesome by Ed Schipul, Dog Played With His Food by Buzz Farmers, Grotesque Tube of Dog Food by John Marcos O’Neill, Dog Food by Sh4rp_I, all licenced.