Dog food ingredients - do they cause allergies?
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Most dog food ingredients come from substandard proteins and additives.
Some companies use additives to boost the protein content in dog food.
In kibble, a company will usually try to list the first ingredient as some kind of meat. i.e. chicken, lamb, turkey, beef.
Dog food ingredients are listed by percentage..... or are they? Companies have twisted this around by instead of a percentage of the entire contents of the bag of kibble as chicken being the highest percentage to chicken weighing much more than the other ingredients.
If you look at the rest of the food ingredient list, you're likely to see ingredients such as chicken or poultry meal, meat and bone meal, corn gluten meal. These are inexpensive sources of protein and not always good food. Any kind of "meal" has chicken feathers, beaks, beef hide, hooves, fur and anything else they can get away with.
This puts a spin on trying to figure out how good a bag of kibble is. More and more concerned pet owners are starting to look at the ingredients on the label and we've been led to believe that the label is accurate.
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Truth is how you interpret it and dog food companies do not care about your dog. They care about how much money they can make.
That's why kibble comes in different shapes and sizes and colors. Ah, hello? Dogs can't see colors and they don't care if they are in the shape of little doggy bones.
This is where marketing comes in. They are marketing the product to you the consumer. Pretty sad right?
All those colorings and additives are put into the kibble, where it does absolutely no good, but looks great on the TV screen or in magazine and advertising. These additives also contribute to the increase of dog food allergies.
It makes me really sad to see what they try to market to the American public. What really makes me sad is that most buy into it.
And my last tirade is about rawhide bones. In the wild a dog will never eat the skin unless he is hurt and can't hunt. Your dog is not going to go without food so don't give him rawhide. It's good for glue not your dog. Rawhide can be swallowed in big chunks which then expand in the stomach which just may be an invitation to the vet hospital in the middle of the night
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Any information contained on this site relating to various medical, health, and fitness conditions of Westies and their treatment is for informational purposes only and is not meant to be a substitute for the advice provided by your own veterinarian. You should not use the information contained herein for diagnosing dog allergies - you should always consult your own veterinarian.
