Review: An eye opener for every dog owner
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 18, 2012
There seems to be much more we should know about dog food or our beloved pets can suffer needlessly.I've been a dog owner for over 40 years and this book taught me much in a very readable manner.The Introduction leads us into nutrition and how it affects our pets, various dog foods and their ingredients, feeding schedules, snacks, and what to do with finicky eaters. The book is not about feeding puppies. It is intended for dogs over one year old.Under Types of Dog Foods, I imagined there would be canned, dried, and snacks. In fact, the author informs us "there are literally thousands of varieties of dog food commercially available today" ranging from very cheap to very expensive. There are dry bagged, canned, moist pouch, prepackaged, raw and organic dog foods. I thought I'd get around all this by just feeding my dogs what their vet sells. Well, there's a surprise there also. Now I was running to the dog cupboard to check ingredients.The author lists the Best Ingredients in Dog Food. Then comes the bad stuff, meat byproducts and animal byproducts. It's quite shocking to read the descriptions of slaughterhouse waste. Besides the eyes, beaks, and fur that are considered byproducts, there is something called Rendered which can include road kill, mice, rats. There is more to shock you in this chapter.The chapter on Shopping for Dog Food is another eye opener. There are copies of the ingredient labels from Brand A and Brand B, an expensive and a cheaper brand of dog food. The author describes them as shocking revelations and indeed they are. I started having questions about why this is allowed in this country.There is much more with enough detail to give the reader a very good understanding so that the next trip to restock will hopefully include more forethought and better nutrition for our pets.There are two items that could make the book even more readable. One is to consolidate the last chapter which is about the author and the first part of the introduction which is also about the author. The other suggestion would be consistency in formatting. Every once in a while the fonts get very big. The content is there so huge fonts are unnecessary.In summary, the author definitely cares about dogs and gives us good information presented in a very readable manner. I would definitely recommend it to every dog owner.