Helping Your Dog Heal

My husband and I currently have four pugs and take in foster pugs for a local rescue organization. Most of the dogs come to us with health problems. One foster pug, Porkchop’s fold was raw and bright red. A vet even suggested plastic surgery to reduce the beautiful deep wrinkle gracing his nose. The rescue organization asked us to take him and see if we could help him, before opting for expensive surgery. They knew of our success with sick dogs.
After an anti-allergy diet we put Porkchop on a human grade dog food Canidae. Within 2 weeks, there was a noticeable improvement. After six weeks, hair began to grow back in his fold, and his ears were no longer hot and itchy. Of course we adopted him.
We are life-long dog owners and fed our dogs’ commercial food for years, until they started having health problems with hot spots, ear infections, and lethargy. After numerous vet trips and bills I started to investigate the ingredients in our dogs’ food a popular lamb and rice formula. I was surprised and puzzled to see the ingredient animal by-product.
I called the company’s 800-number and questioned a representative about animal by-products. She informed me that animal by-products contain various parts of many animals even chicken. What? I fed our dogs lamb and rice because of their allergies to chicken.
Further investigation revealed levels of sodium pentobarbital in commercial food. According to the FDA the drug entered the animal digest from euthanized animals. Another troublesome ingredient is Animal-digest: "Material from chemical and/or enzymatic hydrolysis of clean and undecomposed animal tissue.” I was now aware of the toxicity of many commercial dog foods.
The first three ingredients in dog food represent 75% of the dog food. It should list Beef, Chicken, and Lamb etc to show it is pure. The ingredients listed after are contained in the additional 25%. For example, corn listed as one of the first three ingredients is less desirable than if listed as the eight ingredient. Corn is hard for dogs to digest.
Common ingredients present in most commercial dog food to avoid.
Poultry, Beef, Lamb, or Meat Meals: ground up clean tissues.
Brewer's Rice: Extracted residue of rice after the manufacture of wort (liquid portion of malted grain) or beer.
Corn gluten meal: Residue from corn after removal of starch, germ and the separating the bran when manufacturing cornstarch or syrup.

Animal Fat: Fat source often made up of rendered animal fat, restaurant grease, or other oils too rancid or deemed inedible for humans.
Digest of Beef, Chicken or Meat By-Products: Material taken from the undecomposed tissue from non-rendered clean parts of the animal including, but is not limited to, lungs, spleen, kidneys, brain, livers, blood, bone, partially defatted low-temperature fatty tissue, stomachs and intestines freed of their contents.
We pay a little more now for our dog food, but it is less expensive than the vet bills, and our dogs are healthy