Raising a well-rounded, healthy and happy dog is what we all want, with many pet owners increasingly opting for a more holistic approach to pet care. Research unanimously supports that eating healthily improves our health, so it’s no surprise that researchers in the pet and animal world have come to the same conclusion; diet and exercise play an enormous part in canine physical health and well-being.
Choosing the right pet food to suit your dog can be a daunting task. With hundreds of brands of pet food available in Australia, pet owners often find it challenging to decide what, when and how to feed. To cut through the noise, we’ve put together a guide to choosing the best food for your dog.
Know your dog's life stage and lifestyle
The first step in choosing the right food for your dog is to know their life stage, as this will help you ascertain your dog’s overall nutrition requirement. From birth to 10-12 months all dogs are considered puppies. As they grow and develop, puppies benefit from extra protein, fat, calcium and phosphorus. You likely fed your puppy 3 times a day initially, however by 5 months or so, growth slows but their requirement for high-calorie, good-quality food continues as they grow until 10-18 months, depending on their breed. At this age, dogs are considered mature and their calorie requirement decreases. This is an important milestone and one that is easy to miss while your dog is in their crazy silly teenage stage!
Until age 7 dogs are considered Adult, and thereafter Senior. Calorie requirements reduce at each stage as your dog becomes less active, however, a Senior’s requirement for high-quality protein, calcium, plus vitamins, omega fatty acids and antioxidants are important to support good joint, dental and overall immunity and health as your dog ages. Being aware of these life stages and reducing your dog’s food as they mature means they’ll remain at their optimum weight. Obesity sadly affects an estimated 60% of dogs in Australia (yes 60%!) resulting in health problems that can last a lifetime and decrease your pet’s longevity significantly.
In addition to the life stage, your dog’s breed and amount of daily activity will also have some bearing on the amount they need to eat. A highly active dog being walked or playing hard for more than 3 hours a day needs some compensation for all that energy used! Very small dogs also punch above their weight calorie-wise as they may have a high metabolism. In short, it’s a good idea to consult your vet and look carefully at the packaging of the food you are feeding; check if it’s right for your dog’s life stage and then consider the calorie recommendation, nutrient levels and ingredients.
Dry Food: kibble & freeze-dried meals
Dry food, generally known as kibble, has been fed to most dogs for many years in Australia. It is readily available at pet stores and supermarkets, and convenient to feed. It does not require any extra preparation or refrigeration, has a long shelf life and can be low cost. Kibble provides dogs with carbohydrates, fibre and protein from various sources. Developed in 1956, the ‘extrusion’ cooking process used to make kibble involves grinding up all ingredients to a dough, heating it multiple times to remove water content then adding preservatives, synthetic additives and flavour before pushing it through a machine to create the pellet size and shape desired before being dried, cooled and sprayed. The resulting product can be shelf stable for 18 months or more. There is no question that kibble is convenient – in fact, it was developed around the same time as TV Dinners hit the market in America and Australia as more and more working mothers searched for easy ways to feed their families, and pets too!
Due to its production method, kibble has a very low moisture content of around 10%, so dogs need to drink a lot of water to digest it. Kibble often has artificial preservatives, additives, synthetic vitamins and artificial flavours added to ensure it meets pet food standards, remains shelf stable and makes it more palatable. In many products, the main ingredient is plant rather than animal proteins and it can be difficult for the layperson to understand exactly what is in it. Some of the more expensive kibble products use a quality meat protein but it varies by brand, so it’s worth having a really good look at the bag to see what’s actually in the pellets you’re feeding, especially if your dog has health problems such as excessive scratching, yeast infections, ongoing gut issues or degenerative disease.
Freeze-dried pet food has become increasingly popular in the last few years. It’s made by freezing meat at very low temperatures and then gently heating so that the moisture content turns to water vapour without losing the integrity of the protein itself. As a result, it’s expensive compared to other products and needs to be rehydrated as the moisture content in the packaged product is only 2-3% so dogs must drink a lot of water to ensure they do not become dehydrated. The protein quality is generally high and due to its long shelf life can be an option worth considering for your dog if travelling or as a component of a balanced diet.
Wet food: Canned & Fresh Meals
Canned dog food predates even kibble as it was developed in the 1940s after the war, initially from horse meat as society’s use for horses declined dramatically. Modern canned dog food sold in pouches and tins has more ingredients now and is generally mid-cost, convenient and generally more palatable to dogs than kibble due to its higher moisture content and meatier texture. This style of food, however, still generally contains large amounts of low-quality protein (plant and animal) and additives. Canned food purchased from supermarkets can contain added salt, sugar, artificial flavours and gumming agents to solidify or provide a stew or gravy-like texture to many canned food flavours.
Interestingly, the fastest-growing type of dog food in Australia is fresh meals made from human-grade, Australian meat and vegetables. With demand for this style of feeding growing month on month, it is expected to account for over 10% of the overall pet food market Australia in the next few years. Consumers who value an unprocessed healthy diet naturally want their dogs to eat to the same standard, in a species-appropriate way.
Some pet owners have traditionally made their dog’s meals themselves or supplemented dry or canned food with extra meat and veggies in an effort to improve their dog’s diet. While this may have allayed a nagging concern that their dog would otherwise consume highly processed, boring food day after day, it was often replaced by another fear that the meals they were making were missing important nutrients plus preparing and freezing large volumes of food was laborious and time-consuming.
Thankfully there are now some great options in Sydney for fresh food meals that are locally pre-prepared, nutritionally balanced and often conveniently home delivered to make fresh feeding a much less time-consuming affair. Fresh meal choices in Australia include raw and cooked recipes that are sold frozen, so should be defrosted and fed to your pet immediately in a clean bowl each time to maintain the high quality of each meal and your pet’s health.
The most important thing to check prior to transitioning your dog to a fresh diet is that the product meets pet food standards for balanced and complete nutrition for your dog’s life stage to either AAFCO or FEDIAF standards. This is your assurance that the recipes you will serve have all the nutrients your dog needs.
In the past some vets were hesitant to recommend fresh food as they could not possibly know whether the diet being fed was nutritionally complete and there were valid concerns that ‘pet mince’ was generally fatty, poor quality and risky; so they stuck to recommending and selling kibble because it was a product they were familiar with. This is changing fast as vets increasingly adopt a more holistic approach to disease prevention and overall pet health and become more familiar with these human-grade, whole-food meals that meet international pet food nutrition standards.
Fresh meals are made of premium meat cuts including chicken breast, pasture fed lamb and lean beef. Steamed carrot and pumpkin (to assist with digestibility) and a range of other fruits and vegetables are included too, plus nutrient-dense organ meat which is an excellent natural source of vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, trace minerals, and omegas. Premium brands can be a little more expensive however also include supplements that you may otherwise have purchased such as green-lipped mussel powder (to assist with joints and inflammation) and Atlantic kelp for digestion and better breath. These carefully chosen ingredients are then flash frozen to minus 40 degrees or cooked before being packaged for maximum freshness and quality.
Pet food is personal
Choosing a dog food that will suit your dog (and you too) shouldn’t be a complicated process. Your dog’s life stage should be easy to ascertain and you already know their activity level, so your preference for one style of food over another based on your lifestyle, the quality of the ingredients in the brand you’re considering and the amount you’re willing to spend should be considerations at this point too.
As with anything you would eat yourself, choose dog food that has whole food ingredients that you recognise. Checking the percentage of meat in a product can be helpful to ascertain a product’s quality – meat ‘meal’ refers to rendered meat powder (which can never be better than the real thing) and reject products that have ingredients such as soy, wheat, and corn plus lots of synthetic additives and preservatives.
Finally, and most importantly, does your chosen food pass the sniff test? Dogs make it pretty clear what they do and don’t like, so if your dog is enthusiastic about tasting the food you’ve chosen, gently transition them to their new diet over seven to fourteen days as this will allow their digestive system time to acclimatise. And regardless of what you choose, remember that the right pet food should keep your furry friend healthy, happy and energetic.
Zoe Catchlove is the Founder of Pipsqueak Pets, offering the Pip Eats range of whole-food meals lovingly prepared on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. If you’d like to sample the Pip Eats range of fresh food recipes, or just want to have a chat about pet nutrition to get a better understanding of the appropriate choice for your dog, pop by one of their many tastings at local farmers markets around the Northern Beaches and Mosman.
The @Pipsqueak.Pets Instagram page has regular updates on tasting times and locations. Alternatively, contact Zoe to drop into the Pip Eats commercial kitchen in Orchard Road Brookvale where their kitchen crew are busy making healthy meals for lucky local dogs daily.
A special offer for No Fluff Petcare clients before 30th August, visit our website , select the tasting pack you’d like to try and add code “NOFLUFF” at checkout to receive 10% off our two-box tasting packs. That’s 24 heart-shaped whole-food patties, home delivered anywhere on the Beaches.