Most dog owners whose pets are household family members consider it an inconvenience to evaluate dog food. They usually feed only one or two dogs, never weigh them, and rarely keep any records on them at all. Many base their selection of a dog food solely on how well their dog eats it, not on what the food does for their dog nutritionally. Moreover, the shopper for the dog's food is usually the same individual who shops for the rest of the family's food; the housewife. From the early morning news to the final night-time talk show, the housewife is bombarded with TV commercials, newspaper ads, and magazine ads who are selling the virtues of one brand of dog food over another.

Food chosen for your dog should always be made by proper research and never by some TV commercial. Stop and consider for a moment that TV commercials and magazine ads are designed to sell you the food. So is the food's packaging and other promotions that they are concerned about. After all, your dog can't read and doesn't understand a word the ad man pitches. Just remember your dog does have to eat the food you buy and feed it.

Simply because you like your food with gravy is no reason to believe that your dog does. Just because some people say all your dog needs is meat won't stop your dog from dying from the calcium deficiency produced when it is fed an all-meat diet. You may prefer that hickory smoked flavor, but your dog prefers the essence of rotten rabbit, for example.

And, if you toss in a little extra human gravy to make sure your dog gobbles up his food without pausing for a breath, remember that how fast your dog eats a food has little to do with the nutritional value of that food. The mere fact that your dog eats a food every time it is fed is no indication whatever that the food is good for your dog. Most dogs love the all-animal-tissue foods, but an exclusive diet of nothing but meat will prove fatal.

While dogs kept as pets may fall into any number of categories, only three are important where feeding is concerned. These three categories are related to where the dog lives: exclusively outdoors, outdoors/indoors, or exclusively indoors. There are naturally some areas of overlap, but these three categories are generally easy enough to separate. Most dog owners can place their dogs into the correct category without too much difficulty when it comes to the starting point of establishing the dog's diet.

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