I often speak to people as they're walking around the pet supply stores during a meet & greet event about dog food. I can't tell you how many times I've walked down the aisles, flipped bags of food over, and explained to someone what the ingredients in the food they were going to buy means and then pointed them to a better quality product.

Ironically, I read an article recently, too, about the cost of feeding a high quality food vs. a mass processed food. Even though you pay less for the bag of food, you have to feed more of the food in order to get the name nutritional value for the animals. In the end, it actually costs more to feed an inferior kibble. Here's the link: http://www.gooddogmagazine.com/dogfoodcosts.htm

People are often in amazement when I tell them that my 100 lb dog eats two cups of kibble a day. Admittedly, I have an 85 lb girl who also eats that, and she should be 80 lbs, and I really should be cutting her back (but she's a bit opportunist and is eating for other dogs too).

All of this brings me to the recent tragedy of contaminated pet food that recently rocked the pet-loving nation and killed many pets. I looked at the list of pet foods. Every one of them was a mass-produced, lower quality food (with the exception of Nutro, who has both a high end and a lower end product) using wheat gluten as a source of protein. While misfortunes can happen everywhere, I can only encourage everyone to read the packaging on the foods they feed their dogs. If you don't know what it is, you probably shouldn't be feeding it to your dog (and yes, I did Google "Wheat Gluten" to find out exactly what it was, because it's not in my dogs' food).

Attached is the Whole Dog Journal's list TOP 100 dog foods. If you've never done research on what's in your dog's food, this is eye opening.

Bon Apetit!