You want your Morkie to have the most nutritious diet possible, but how to decide, with literally thousands of choices in commercial dog food? Here’s a great resource for rating commercial foods. It’s reliable and unbiased.
Meet DogFoodAdvisor.com
An invaluable resource is the website DogFoodAdvisor.com. Founder and editor Mark Sagman has made it his mission to help you make an informed decision when buying commercial dog food. Since 2008, Mark and his team have reviewed almost 5,000 products.
Mark was moved to start the site when he and his family lost their beloved rescue dog, Penny, in the massive 2007 pet food recalls. You might remember, there were tens of thousands of pet deaths, mostly due to poisonous fillers in the food. Fillers like melamine – yes, the same stuff that is used to make kitchen counters.
Read more about this heartbreaking disaster on Wikipedia.
Reliable, honest and unbiased
Here’s Mark’s basic advice about picking dog food:
Many commercial dog foods are well known, thanks to heavy advertising by the manufacturers. But their popularity has nothing at all to do with their nutritional value. Popular brands like Purina, Alpo, Beneful, Hills Science Diet and Pedigree dog foods all earn just 1 star out of 5 on the contents when analyzed by dogfoodadvisor.com
Why? From harmful additives to mystery ingredients, these foods are made up of cheap fillers (corn, soybeans) that your dog can’t digest properly, or doesn’t need. They have “animal fat” from unidentified sources, such as dead, dying and diseased livestock and even euthanized pets! And they’re processed at such high temperatures that much of the nutritional value has been cooked out.
Get alerts of dog food recalls
At dogfoodadvisor.com you can sign up for free alerts about dog food recalls. No cost and no obligation.
Even quality foods can run into problems from time to time, with batches of food that are contaminated, so these alerts are well worth getting.
Rethinking Nylabone, thanks to DogFoodAdvisor.com
In a recent post, I wrote about the dangers of rawhide sticks. They can be a choking hazard and are manufactured with a lot of toxic chemicals.
I recommended alternatives, including a good quality nylon bone such as Nylabone. However, thanks to the DogFoodAdvisor.com website, I learned that even Nylabones can be recalled.
In April 2015, the Nylabone puppy starter kit was recalled because it has the potential to be contaminated with Salmonella.
Plus, if your Morkie can chew any bits of the Nylabone off, he could easily swallow these tiny plastic pieces, causing serious digestive problems.
We only buy Organic meats and veggies and I cook extra for our 3 lil pups. They get 1/3 of the meat, 1/3 veggies mixed with 1/3 of organic dry food. We give them the Wellness Natural pet food that we buy from Amazon. They love and eat everything.
That sounds like a great diet! Thanks for sharing.
Deb@MorkieNation.com
I believe in cooking for my dog, I basically know what I am giving her. She is very finicky but we manage to share most foods. A little extra work but worth it..