Treating your Dog

It’s Thanksgiving on Thursday, which makes for a light week.  Well, light as in news.  Not in food.  But something has to be light, so it will be GreenGoPost's tone for the week.  Today I thought I’d talk about dog treats and how you can make your little fella happier during the holiday season—as well as at any time of year.

If you have a mixed breed and your dog has been healthy all along, you are fortunate.  But if you have a purebred, such as our little guy, Cosmo the shih-tzu, then you have to be aware of allergies and other chronic conditions.  Furthermore, a lot of those ingredients are harmful in the long term to dogs . . . if you're concerned over your pal's health, follow the same rule when you buy food:  if you can't pronounce the ingredient or the entire list reads like a Who's Who in the Additive Hall of Fame, then skip it.

So does this mean you have to take a bite out of your budget in keeping your pet happy?  Not at all.  For the last several years I've been buying these brands for Cosmo, depending on if a Trader Joe's is nearby, or if the woman who runs the pet store around the corner bothers to show up.  And they range about $3 for a 20 ounce bag:

• Cloud Star Molasses Buddy Biscuits:  available at Trader Joe's and Fresh & Easy.  They're made of whole wheat flour, oats, molasses, vegetable oil, and Vitamin E.  That's it.
• Avoderm Natural Oven-Baked:  Ground rice, lamb meal, oatmeal, flax, avocado, blueberries, carrots . . . pretty benign, though I'm not thrilled that "Natural Flavor" is the 6th ingredient before flax.
• Breeder's Choice Advanced Pet Diets Pumpkin and Apple K9 Snack Bars:  Just chicken, rice, oats, rice, pumpkin, flax, alfalfa, eggs, and apples.  Yum . . .

We did a blind taste test (sadly, it really was a blind test as Cosmo has cataracts!), and came to a scientific conclusion as to what is the best of the three.   You can watch it here.

Are you concerned about pet food ingredients?  Does it matter?  Tips?  Let us know!