LJ Idol Season 8, Week 31, Polemic
I am the dog food snob.
Ask my friends or anyone online who uses the dog internet lists I frequent. I talk about dog food all the time. It’s part of my Asperger’s. When someone has an Asperger’s diagnosis they usually have special interests, that is the polite way of referring to them, but what they really are is fixations, which boarder on obsessions. When I was a child I had special interests in things such as herpetology, whales, horses, Martin Luther King Jr., tea cups, collecting things that are miniature, heck I still get excited about seeing miniature things. I’m getting distracted, back to the dog food. I don’t eat it, usually, but I generally taste what I feed my dog. That’s not the important part though. It’s the nutrition that is important. It’s knowing what is best for your dog. It’s knowing how to read the label. I’ve gotten good at this from college animal nutrition classes, and also by doing my own personal research.
Did you know that most veterinarians aren’t required to take a full semester class in animal nutrition? They are however given free pet food, supplies, and free lunches from major pet food companies. It’s a bit like doctor’s getting pushed by drug company representatives. The difference is that a lot of vets don’t have enough background in animal nutrition to know what’s good and what’s not. This makes them easy to brain wash. I’d never trust a vet’s opinion of what to feed my dog, and I never rely on them for nutritional information, but I know that thousands of people do.
There are many problems with commercial dog foods. The first is that the government doesn’t regulate them as strictly as it does human food. We have regulations about what goes into our kids’ school lunches, but the pet food standards are pretty relaxed. If you look at the labels you’ll find shocking things, but there are things even the labels can’t tell you.
If the food is not made of human grade, and in the United States USDA approved, ingredients than it is likely the meat sources have come from what are termed 4D meats. This means that the meat comes from animals that are diseased, disabled, dying, or dead when they reach the slaughterhouse. The product can’t be used for human consumption, but it’s great for pet food, or so the government thinks. Personally, I don’t want my dog eating meat from an abscess infested carcass, or one that is questionable in any way, do you?
Sometimes the type of meat isn’t even specified. On the lowest quality foods the packaging will simply say meat meal, bone meal, animal digest, or so on. This is troublesome because it means the source can be from anywhere, and also that the product can be a large problem for pets with food allergies, as the formula can change from batch to batch.
Other problems include cancer causing preservatives no longer approved for human consumption, things like corn and soy that are common allergens and difficult to digest, beet pulp which simply bulks up the food and means more waste to pick up, high carbohydrate loads that are unnatural to the dog’s diets, and many more. It amazes me that people don’t read labels, but I understand how easy it is to believe a vet, friend, breeder, or pet store employee, because I have done all of those things before I was educated on what to look for. I never knew that dog food included dyes, parts of tomatoes where primarily pesticides exist, egg shells, or a whole host of other things. I learned, and once I started I began to learn fast. I could pay as much for a natural dog food that was good for my dog, as I could for a premium brand that was questionable or actually very poor. The commercials on TV with the cute dogs made me want to buy inferior brands, and the advertising really worked on me until I knew better.
It was when I had my first guide dog get diagnosed with cancer that I really woke up and started paying attention. That is a common result of feeding inferior foods with carcinogens in them. I learned a lot in a short amount of time by doing research, and followed that education up with college level animal nutrition courses. I learned that the probiotics added to some foods had no value because all their worth was cooked out. So I gave my dog with cancer a probiotic or natural yogurt to help his gut. Later I learned that the glucosamine and other supplements added to foods are not enough to really make a difference, so I supplemented my arthritic dog’s diet with the things he needed in pill form. He was able to remain comfortable without pain medication because of what I did to his diet, joint supplements, and antioxidants I also added. I learned that baked food is generally healthier than most extruded food, because many extruded foods are then sprayed with fats or preservatives. I learned that most dog food labels have feeding recommendations which are more than the average dog really needs to eat. I learned to read labels, ask questions, and contact the companies directly if I needed more information. I learned how to find foods for people whose dogs have allergies, and I regularly get e-mails from people I don’t even know wanting assistance with dog foods or supplements. The more I learned, the more I became fixated.
I believe we have a duty to feed our dogs food that is healthy for them. They don’t have the ability to choose food for themselves. Even when I was living on SSI and hardly had enough money to feed myself, my dogs ate good food. To me, it’s no different than feeding a child in my care. Most of our dogs eat the same thing every day, and we wouldn’t allow our child to eat McDonald’s every day, or even worse, diseased meats, and ingredients they were never meant to digest in the first place.
My belief is so strong it has gotten me into arguments with friends, people on the internet, guide dog school employees, and even veterinarians my dogs have seen. I’m sticking to what I believe though. The government should do a better job of protecting our dogs by changing their regulations, implementing tougher standards, and just giving a damn at all. Vet schools should require that their students take one or more semesters of animal nutrition classes. They should refuse the free dog food they obtain from companies who don’t produce a wholesome product, and teach their vet students to have some sort of dog food standard to live by. This would all be in a perfect world though. For now it’s just me and my soap box as I step up and lecture about my latest fixation. That doesn’t mean I’ll give up though, even if no one is on the band wagon with me, I’ll still speak up. My dog is counting on me to do the right thing. Can your dog count on you?
Ask my friends or anyone online who uses the dog internet lists I frequent. I talk about dog food all the time. It’s part of my Asperger’s. When someone has an Asperger’s diagnosis they usually have special interests, that is the polite way of referring to them, but what they really are is fixations, which boarder on obsessions. When I was a child I had special interests in things such as herpetology, whales, horses, Martin Luther King Jr., tea cups, collecting things that are miniature, heck I still get excited about seeing miniature things. I’m getting distracted, back to the dog food. I don’t eat it, usually, but I generally taste what I feed my dog. That’s not the important part though. It’s the nutrition that is important. It’s knowing what is best for your dog. It’s knowing how to read the label. I’ve gotten good at this from college animal nutrition classes, and also by doing my own personal research.
Did you know that most veterinarians aren’t required to take a full semester class in animal nutrition? They are however given free pet food, supplies, and free lunches from major pet food companies. It’s a bit like doctor’s getting pushed by drug company representatives. The difference is that a lot of vets don’t have enough background in animal nutrition to know what’s good and what’s not. This makes them easy to brain wash. I’d never trust a vet’s opinion of what to feed my dog, and I never rely on them for nutritional information, but I know that thousands of people do.
There are many problems with commercial dog foods. The first is that the government doesn’t regulate them as strictly as it does human food. We have regulations about what goes into our kids’ school lunches, but the pet food standards are pretty relaxed. If you look at the labels you’ll find shocking things, but there are things even the labels can’t tell you.
If the food is not made of human grade, and in the United States USDA approved, ingredients than it is likely the meat sources have come from what are termed 4D meats. This means that the meat comes from animals that are diseased, disabled, dying, or dead when they reach the slaughterhouse. The product can’t be used for human consumption, but it’s great for pet food, or so the government thinks. Personally, I don’t want my dog eating meat from an abscess infested carcass, or one that is questionable in any way, do you?
Sometimes the type of meat isn’t even specified. On the lowest quality foods the packaging will simply say meat meal, bone meal, animal digest, or so on. This is troublesome because it means the source can be from anywhere, and also that the product can be a large problem for pets with food allergies, as the formula can change from batch to batch.
Other problems include cancer causing preservatives no longer approved for human consumption, things like corn and soy that are common allergens and difficult to digest, beet pulp which simply bulks up the food and means more waste to pick up, high carbohydrate loads that are unnatural to the dog’s diets, and many more. It amazes me that people don’t read labels, but I understand how easy it is to believe a vet, friend, breeder, or pet store employee, because I have done all of those things before I was educated on what to look for. I never knew that dog food included dyes, parts of tomatoes where primarily pesticides exist, egg shells, or a whole host of other things. I learned, and once I started I began to learn fast. I could pay as much for a natural dog food that was good for my dog, as I could for a premium brand that was questionable or actually very poor. The commercials on TV with the cute dogs made me want to buy inferior brands, and the advertising really worked on me until I knew better.
It was when I had my first guide dog get diagnosed with cancer that I really woke up and started paying attention. That is a common result of feeding inferior foods with carcinogens in them. I learned a lot in a short amount of time by doing research, and followed that education up with college level animal nutrition courses. I learned that the probiotics added to some foods had no value because all their worth was cooked out. So I gave my dog with cancer a probiotic or natural yogurt to help his gut. Later I learned that the glucosamine and other supplements added to foods are not enough to really make a difference, so I supplemented my arthritic dog’s diet with the things he needed in pill form. He was able to remain comfortable without pain medication because of what I did to his diet, joint supplements, and antioxidants I also added. I learned that baked food is generally healthier than most extruded food, because many extruded foods are then sprayed with fats or preservatives. I learned that most dog food labels have feeding recommendations which are more than the average dog really needs to eat. I learned to read labels, ask questions, and contact the companies directly if I needed more information. I learned how to find foods for people whose dogs have allergies, and I regularly get e-mails from people I don’t even know wanting assistance with dog foods or supplements. The more I learned, the more I became fixated.
I believe we have a duty to feed our dogs food that is healthy for them. They don’t have the ability to choose food for themselves. Even when I was living on SSI and hardly had enough money to feed myself, my dogs ate good food. To me, it’s no different than feeding a child in my care. Most of our dogs eat the same thing every day, and we wouldn’t allow our child to eat McDonald’s every day, or even worse, diseased meats, and ingredients they were never meant to digest in the first place.
My belief is so strong it has gotten me into arguments with friends, people on the internet, guide dog school employees, and even veterinarians my dogs have seen. I’m sticking to what I believe though. The government should do a better job of protecting our dogs by changing their regulations, implementing tougher standards, and just giving a damn at all. Vet schools should require that their students take one or more semesters of animal nutrition classes. They should refuse the free dog food they obtain from companies who don’t produce a wholesome product, and teach their vet students to have some sort of dog food standard to live by. This would all be in a perfect world though. For now it’s just me and my soap box as I step up and lecture about my latest fixation. That doesn’t mean I’ll give up though, even if no one is on the band wagon with me, I’ll still speak up. My dog is counting on me to do the right thing. Can your dog count on you?