Dog Food Week - Why to feed your dog with high quality food?

This is the third post of my Dog Food Week. The previous post was "How much does the high quality food cost"? If you want to know more about the Dog Food Week or the schedule, read the introduction post.

I think the real question should be "Why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you feed your precious family member with the best food possible? People don't eat crappy food, so dogs shouldn't be forced to eat it either. But feeding quality food is more than just a kind act. It will help the dog to live healthier, longer life.

Improves health and elongates life

Think about the ways you can make your dog's life better and the ways you can ensure that your dog stays as healthy as possible. You can teach him tricks to make sure that it he gets to use his brains and doesn't get bored. You can play with him or take him to biking, hiking, jogging, walking or whatever to make sure that he gets plenty of exercise. You can take him to the dog park to give him a possibility to interact with other dogs. You can take him to the vet if he seems sick. So there's basically just activation and exercise. And oh, feeding.

Sometimes you're busy and you don't have time to go out for a long walk, or it's raining too hard, or maybe you don't have imagination to make up new tricks all the time. But you feed your dog every single day, no matter what.

Studies say that dogs will live about two years longer if they are fed with quality food. They will also stay healthier longer. That's what I want for my dogs. I want them to live a happy long life with me as I love them so much. I want them to be here with me as long as possible, and since there aren't so many ways I can ensure that, at least I'm feeding them with high quality food. I also believe that with right diet the dog will stay healthier longer, that even though the dog gets old, it will stay healthy.

And who wouldn't want his or her dog to live a long, happy, healthy life?

Poop is pop

And another very relevant reason to feed the dog with quality food is poop. It is the first thing that changes after changing successfully to a high quality food. The poop looks different and there's less of it. I have witnessed this myself. We spent a week dog-sitting my sister's dachshund and she ate some low quality dog food. Her poop was very dark and very, very smelly and quite loose too. Definitely not something nice to pick up. The same with my mother's dachshund. When our dogs poop (considering that they have not been eating something unusual), it's not unpleasant. The poop is solid, nicely colored (if you can say that from a poop) and definitely not as bad smelling.

We fed Niila with Royal Canin when we got her, because that was what she ate at the breeder's, and we didn't want to change that right away. And she pooped awful, awful poops and awfully lot too. When we changed to Orijen Puppy, the problem was solved. No more smelly piles of poop. I have heard this same story from other dog-owners too; on low quality food the dog poops more often.


So if your dog seem to poop a lot and the poop smells awful, is loose or the color is too dark or gray, it's probably because of the low quality food. Change for high quality food and watch if it changes for better. It's better for you too, since you will be picking it up! Just remember that it takes weeks for dog to adjust to a new food, so the change might not happen overnight.

Why support crap?

As long as people are bying cheap food with suspicious ingredients, dog food manufactures keep making it and less educated people keep feeding it to their dogs. Require quality and we will get more quality. And maybe the prices would become lower too since there would be higher demand for the food and also healthy competition between the high quality dog food brand. Who knows?

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