Treating Your Pet Right

Can you imagine a time when dog food, cat food, or pet treats did not exist? In this day in age, what would we do without pet treats? They are really communication tools, training tools, nutritional supplements as well as being quite crucial for people to pet bonding.

The very first commercial dog food was a product produced in the year 1860. A salesman named James Pratt was visiting England from the United States and saw dogs surviving off of mere left-over biscuits from ships. So he decided to prepare a dog biscuit product consisting of wheat meal, vegetable, beetroot and meat, and begin selling them entirely to English rural gentlemen who owned sporting dogs.

A lot has changed since that time; as our ideas of nutrition have advanced, so have our pets' foods.

New products such as dry kibble, canned foods, and moist products have varied our choices substantially.

For many dog and cat owners, the food that we give our pets means a great deal, while the treats we give them are a mere afterthought. Even the most health-conscious pet owners who purchase expensive cat and dog food often go to the supermarket and take the least expensive treats right off the shelves. Why is it that so many of us have a habit of feeding our pets top shelf foods and then give them relatively poor treats with the nutritional value of paper? We ask a lot of our pets' foods. Even the healthiest cat or dog food does not provide everything. Each pet has different needs.

Because we only feed our pets around 2 times a day, treats are a superb supplement to their diets. Even 2 or 3 treats a day really adds up in the long haul. If we are going to add calories, they really should be healthy ones.

Your supermarket is filled with treats that are full of poor ingredients. Here are a few things you will definately want to look out for:

Soybean meal, wheat, wheat meal, corn gluten meal, corn meal, whole/crushed corn, and maize are very frequently used for their protein. They cost far less to include in a treat than the superior quality carbohydrates or meat protein such as chicken or fish. In addition to this, soybean meal as well as ground corn and wheat are common pet allergens.

Also keep this in mind when choosing a cat food or a dog food.

Artificial food coloring is widely used even though they are completely unnecessary and have even been linked to medical issues. It is believed by some in the medical field that if an ingredient is foreign to the body the body reacts to it and can cause numerous health issues. Pets care more about taste than color.

By-products are an easy way for dog food or cat food and treat firms to keep costs down. Instead of using whole meats, they use by-products. These are obviously the less desirable parts of animals.

Essentially, by-products are all of the items that you would not willingly feed to your pet. Stay away from them if possible.

There are a number of other items that the labels do not always reveal to us. For example, condemned parts of animals not good enough for human ingestion are sometimes rerouted into commercial treats. These parts may be the parts of animals who are dead, dying, decayed or even diseased. In addition, certain meats, grains and other ingredients cannot be sold for use by people. They are either damaged or else the meat does not have the look that the US Dept. of Agriculture officials want. Sadly, we cannot always decipher this from the label. This goes for treats, dog food as well as cat food.

In addition, certain firms have lower standards pertaining to the freshness of the ingredients they use. Though there should be a "use by" date or code on most packages. We would not eat stale cookies so why would we want to give anything but fresh ingredients to our pets? Again this applies to dog food and treats and cat products.

For additional information go to Premium Dog Food and Products and find out about holistic pet nutrition and premium dog and cat food.

This Article initially appeared in the July 2005 Healthy Pet Net Newsletter and remains the property of Healthy Pet Net.