Make Your Own Dog Food - Save Your Dog's Life

But you don’t give your dog toxins! Or do you? You probably do without even knowing it.

Do you make your own dog food or use commercial dog food? If you use commercial dog food, then there is a good chance you are feeding your dog toxins.

Even many dog treats contain toxins that are harmful for your dog!

There are some preservatives, such as BHA & BHT, that are not healthy if consumend on a daily basis. These same preservatives are used in many commercial dog foods. Problem is, we feed our dogs this food on a daily basis!

Another preservative, Ethoxyquin, has been banned for human use, but is still used in dog food.

Why do the dog foods even need a preservative? They are used as a fat stabilizer to prevent the dog food from going rancid, thus enabling a long shelf life (up to 2 years).

But here is the most deceitful part of the toxin issue – these preservatives don’t always have to be listed on the dog food ingredient label! If the manufacturer did not add the preservative itself, they don’t have to list it - legally. However, the processing plant that provides the ingredients to the dog food plant may very well have used any of these preservatives!

A good way to check to see if your dog food has preservatives is to check the expiration label. If the shelf-life of your dog food is greater than 1 year, it’s got some kind of preservatives – probably the kind you don’t want your pet to have!

TIP: Dog food labels have SO MANY loopholes. Below are just two of them:

• There is particular wording of ingredients that mean different things that the consumer would never guess (chicken dog food and dog food with chicken mean entirely different things about how much chicken it contains).

• They are able to separate ingredients so they can go lower on the ingredient label. For example, corn gluten meal, corn grits, whole grain corn, and corn germ meal can all be found in one dog food. Why not just say "corn" unless you are trying to hide something. Add up all the above into one ingredient of corn might just end up bumping corn to the top of the ingredient list!

One of the advantages when you make your own dog food is that you know exactly what is in the food you feed your dog. You have complete control over what your dog eats. When you make your own dog food, you use human-grade ingredients – none of those extremely harmful preservatives are in our food. When you make homemade healthy dog food you are stopping the build-up of toxins in your dog's body.

Of course there are a handful of companies out there that do care about your dog and provide nutritious, harmful-preservative-free food. Some provide kibble to which you add your own fresh meat and/or vegetables. This is a great way to feed your dogs when you do not have the time, or the energy, to make your own dog food from scratch. One brand that I love is Sojos. They provide a quality, all-natural kibble and you just add your own meat and/or veggies to make a nutritious, well-balanced meal.

The most important thing you can do if you don’t make your own dog food is to learn how to read the ingredient label. Although harmful preservatives may not always show up, the rest of the ingredient list should be a tell-tale sign as to whether the dog food company cares about your dog or its profits. You can't tell the best dog food by the packaging - you always have to read your ingredients list!

If you want more information, check out Make Your Own Dog Food. I feel fooled and cheated by the big commercial dog food companies. I thought they cared about our pets, our members of our families. I never guessed how non-nutritious and harmful commercial dog food can be. But now that I know the truth, I can’t go back. And my dogs are extremely happy about that! You can make your own dog food – it’s easy, but best of all, it’s what’s best for your dog