I wouldn't feed most commercial pet food to my dogs, let alone eat it myself.

http://www.preciouspets.org/report.htm

Surviving just isn’t surviving if you don’t have a nice, shiny coat.

Here's a link to a documentary about a guy who ate nothing but "Monkey Chow" for a week. He survived, and the first few days didn't look too bad, but he was hurting at the end.

http://www.angryman.ca/monkey.html

Sorry if it's a re-post, can't remember if I found it posted on this site or a different one.

If you read the pet food labels, and deciphered what they mean, you wouldn't want to eat most of it. Let me offer a few examples.

"Meat" (non-specific) means any kind of meat, including "unspecified" kinds like roadkill, euthanized animals, dogs, cats, llama and raccoons.

"By-products" means mostly any part of an animal EXCEPT muscle meat: feet, combs, wattles, cancerous tumors, intestines, gonads, lungs, etc.

"Animal Digest" is the really repulsive stuff: it can be unspecified parts of unspecified animals. The animals used can be obtained from almost any source and no control is in place over quality or contamination. Any kind of animal, like the "4-D animals" (dead, diseased, disabled, or dying prior to slaughter), goats, pigs, horses, rats, euthanized at animal shelters, restaurant and supermarket refuse. Then they either cook it all down, or use enzymes to break it down, then they spray it over the chicken feed (below) to give it the meaty flavor. If you HAVE to ever eat it, try to think of it as "gravy".

That's just the meat stuff. There are products like Old Roy, the Wally World special, that has virtually no meat protein in it except Old Roy himself, and he's been thinned down something awful.

The main ingredients of most well-known pet foods are lower-quality grains that aren't suitable for human consumption: corn, wheat, soy, rice, barley, etc. In other words, chicken feed, at two or three times the price of layer mix.

Some more of the good stuff is the reason that major pet food companies are in the pet food business to begin with: they are the original source of human food waste, the leftovers from the processing of food for people. Here's where they get rid of the sugar beet pulp, the brewer's wastes, etc. In case you didn't realize it, the biggest pet food companies are owned by human food companies: Nestles owns Purina, Alpo, Fancy Feast, Friskies, Pro Plan & Mighty Dog; Del Monte owns Gravy Train, Nature's Recipe & 9-Lives; Proctor & Gamble owns IAMS and Eukanuba. The pet food business prevents them from having to pay dump fees.

Down toward the bottom of the list of ingredients are the vitamin and mineral supplements. They are added because all the ingredients listed above them have had most of their nutrition removed, or it isn't accessible to the dog or cat's digestive system.

And if this isn't enough to put you off the stuff and even refuse to feed it to your pets, the dry foods with all the grains tends to give you awful gas. Enough to light up Seattle for at least a week.

The really good pet foods, with human-consumption-grade ingredients are beyond my means for either me or the dog.

Oh, I almost forgot. My vet says dogs have a fast digestive system (um, faster or shorter or something), so things like Salmonella doesn't bother them much. You can buy a 35 lb box of turkey necks frozen in a lump, defrost them, refreeze them singly so you can pull out however many you want for a few days, and it won't bother the dog. It is highly recommended that we don't do that with our food. Apparently, we retain our food for a longer period of time, thus absorbing more of the nasties if they are available.

My vet also says that over the years, he has come to believe that commercial pet foods are responsible for many of the problems that our pets show up with, like skin problems, chronic gas and diarrhea, and developmental issues and cancers, kidney and liver problems. He says about good pet nutrition: "Pay now for good food, or pay me later to try to fix things, but you're going to pay."

And that's all I have to say about that. I think.

Except (you knew it, right?)... everyone has neighbors who are nice and helpful and let you borrow their tools. You also have the other kind who, in a widespread disaster-type situation, will cause nothing but trouble. As I said earlier about bears: meat is meat.

Sue (just call me Ms. Alfred Packer if push comes to shove)

"...just call me Ms. Alfred Packer..."

First cousin to John "Liver Eating" Johnson (Johnston), right???

Don't know about the canned stuff, but many years ago a friend's doctor advised her that it was actually healthier for her toddler to snack on milk-bone dog biscuits than the candy and stuff they sell for kids. More nutritious, no sugar etc.

Don't know if the doctor is still in practice.

I do know there is some dog food even my dog won't eat.

Maybe the lost grand-daughter to Ed Gein! The newspaper in Plainfield, WI reported rumors of a daughter in labor in 1957. No proof of existance ever surfaced.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Gein

I agree it can be expensive but there's a way to do it cheaper. I only buy premium dry (Canidae) and try to get as much fresh meat as possible. Mix that with some steamed vegetables if you want and you're good to go. The trick I've found is to get to know your local butcher (even better if he likes dogs) and ask them to put aside some 'scraps' for you. Its a thousand times cheaper than the premium canned/dehydrated stuff and they'll always throw in some extras.

For the next month or longer, our dogs are eating free venison thanks to our buddies that hunt. Some guys just want the racks, and are more than happy to give up the carcass.

Can I move into your kennel????? Your dogs probably won't mind,,,much!!!!!