Dog Health Food - Could Your Dachshund Be Getting Sick From Their Food?

Your Dachshund could be suffering if they're not eating dog health food. There are more and more stories about dangerous additives finding their way into your dog food. It is really vital to know what is really going into your dog's food if you want them to live a long and healthy life.

With companies around the world looking for ways to increase their profits, you have to question if they are going to justify the expense of high quality ingredients. With many sources of cheap protein available now, who knows how it was produced, under what conditions and if it even has any real nutritional value for your dog?

With so many cases of profits being put before the health of humans, what is being done to our beloved dogs? By taking waste products from human food production and putting them in to dog food, there has been a huge increase in diet related health problems in recent years.

In 2007 over 100 different brands of dog food were recalled after contaminated ingredients caused the deaths of a number of dogs and made many more very ill. Eventually it was found to be melamine in rice protein and wheat gluten, from a factory in China. This means that there could be anything in your dog food no matter what the standards are in the US factory. Also there is very little nourishment in these grains for dogs. Usually it's just a filler to add bulk to the food.

Recently there was a case of melamine being found in milk powder that had been produced under the much stricter human food production standards. This leads me to think that it's only a matter of time before there's another contaminated batch of dog food released, and I certainly don't want to have my puppy suffer as a result of not taking action. We now need to be aware of how safe the food we are feeding to our dog is, not just if it has the right nutrition in it.

Now we have to have a look at the actual nutritional value of your dog food. More and more it's becoming accepted practice to bulk out dog food with rice and corn proteins. These proteins are an unusable by product of the human food industry, until someone realised that they would fall under the definition of protein and could therefore be added to dog food. Now while there is nothing wrong with plant proteins, they simply give very little nutritional content for a dog. Even if they were whole proteins rather than the highly processed ones that are added, a very small amount would be sufficient for a dogs diet. However, there is all to often more plant protein than animal. This isn't going to help your Dachshund stay healthy and free of disease.

Lately fish protein is being hailed as a great source of protein, which is true. But, along with that protein comes a carcinogenic preservative which has also been linked to severe allergies. So be wary of fish meal in your dog food

This is just the start of what could be going into the food that your Dachshund is eating every day. By learning about dog health food you could add years of life to your best friend. If you make it yourself you will know exactly what is in your dog's food, and best of all it's great fun.