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Feeding a high quality dog food will add years to your pet's life and reduce its chances of developing many common health problems. This article will help you identify and choose the best diet for your furry companion.

How do you know which dog food is best for your dog? For many the choice is a homemade diet. This is usually the best, and occasionally the only, choice for animals with multiple food allergies. Whether you want to go raw or cooked, whole bones, ground bones or no bones are other choices to be made.

Basically, a homemade diet should consist of 40-60% meat, 20-50% vegetables, and the rest, optionally, grains. The choice within each category is vast, and depends on your budget, availability, and what your dog does best on. Food allergies often dictate what is used.

Remember, every dog is unique and what is best for one may not work well for another. Feeding a variety of foods is a good way to provide all or most of the nutrients that your pet needs.
A good quality multi-vitamin and a calcium supplement will help make sure the diet is complete. It is difficult to attain the right amount and balance of calcium to phosphorus in a home made dog food, without some form of calcium supplementation.

If you like the idea of homemade pet food, but lack the time, there are pre-mixes available, or complete ready-to-serve meals. Pre-mixes come freeze-dried, dehydrated or frozen. Usually they are grain and vegetable mixes, along with necessary supplements, to which you add your choice of meat. Or you can go the opposite way, and buy frozen or freeze-dried meats, and add your own veggies and grains if you wish.

Complete raw-foods diets are also sold as frozen, dry or freeze-dried. Some areas may have local entrepreneurs who make and sell these diets fresh. They may also custom make meals to your pets specifications.

If you prefer to feed a commercial canned or dry dog food, choose one of the many premium brands now on the market. Although the cost may be higher than grocery store brands, what you save in vet bills more than makes up for the difference.

Whether to feed canned or dry pet food will depend on you and your dog. Canned food is usually more expensive, kibble is more convenient. Dogs usually prefer canned foods and some need the softer, wetter consistency. Canned dog foods generally contain higher quality proteins than dry dog food, and a higher percentage of protein and fat. The higher moisture content of canned foods can be beneficial to dogs with kidney or

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