When it comes to buying pet food, higher cost doesn’t always mean higher quality, according to the March issue of Consumer Reports. A higher price could indicate better ingredients and better quality control during and after manufacturing, but it could also just mean prettier packaging, more marketing, or a fancy name. And despite food safety concerns that resulted from a recall of pet food tainted with melamine in 2007, Consumer Reports urges caution for consumers who are considering making their own pet food, a growing trend.

Consumer Reports asked eight experts in dog and cat nutrition at seven top veterinary schools what consumers get by spending more for pet food. They were also asked what they served their own pets: Most of the experts said they use a variety of common brands sold at pet stores or supermarkets.

A recent survey by the Associated Press found that although Americans may be spending less on themselves, they’re not scrimping on their pets. According to the survey, just one in seven pet owners said they had curtailed spending on their pet during the past year, even as they cut back on other expenses.

Thirty-seven percent of U.S. households have dogs, and 32 percent have cats. But because of multi-cat households, felines outnumber canines: As of 2007, there were almost 82 million cats and 72 million dogs.

The bottom line, says Consumer Reports: It’s more important to look for the overall nutrient profile of a particular pet food brand than it is to shop by price or even individual ingredients. “As a pet owner, your main goal is to ensure that your animal is active and healthy,” says Jamie Hirsh, associate health editor at Consumer Reports. “That suggests that the food you’re buying is doing its job. But it’s also important to know that you don’t have to choose the most expensive food to get what’s best for your pet. Look for food labeled ‘complete and balanced,’ which indicates it can be the pet’s sole nourishment.”

Hirsh advises pet owners to look for labels stating that the food’s nutritional adequacy was validated by animal-feeding tests based on protocols from the American Association of Feed Control Officials, a regulatory group. That statement is a step above the other one that AAFCO allows — that a food was formulated to meet the group’s nutrient profiles. “In addition, make sure the package has contact information for the food’s manufacturer, in case you have questions,” Hirsh says.

Consumers should also take into consideration the age of their pet and whether he or she has special needs. For example, cats with kidney or urinary problems might benefit from the moisture in wet food, while animals with dental issues might do better with dry food.

What Pet-Food Labels Really Mean

For pet food, there’s no official definition of organic, human-grade, premium, no fillers, or gourmet. Gluten-free foods are generally necessary only for the tiny percentages of pets that are intolerant of that protein. There’s some evidence that antioxidants — such as vitamin E — and some omega-3 fatty acids might enhance pets’ immunity or help protect against certain diseases, but the experts interviewed by Consumer Reports were split on whether consumers need to look for them.

Consumer Reports recommends that consumers educate themselves about pet food labeling, which is mostly defined by AAFCO, which sets standards for pet food manufacturing.

Here are some examples:

– The 95 percent rule (Beef for Dogs). Named ingredient(s) must account
for a least 95 percent of the product by weight.
– Dinner; also Entree, Formula, Nuggets, Platter, Recipe (Chicken and
Salmon Dinner for Cats). The named ingredients must make up at least
25 percent of the product by weight, not counting water. Each
individual food must make up at least 3 percent.
– “With …” (Gourmet Fillets with Turkey for Dogs). Contains 3 percent
or more of the named ingredient.
– Flavor (Beef flavor). No specific percentage required, but the
product must contain enough of the food to impart the claimed flavor,
or another substance that tastes like it (beef stock, for example).
– Guaranteed analysis. Mandatory guarantee that the food contains the
labeled percentages of crude protein, fat, fiber, and moisture.
– Light, lite, low-calorie. Meets AAFCO limits for a reduced-calorie
diet for overweight dogs and cats. “Lean” and “low-fat” have a
similar meaning for fat.
– Natural. Technically, the food has few or no synthetic ingredients.
But the claim is loosely defined.
– Grain-free. Protein in the product comes from nongrain sources
(perhaps for people who want pets to eat more animal protein). It’s
unclear whether there’s any benefit to a diet high in animal protein.

What Consumers Can Do

Consumer Reports offers the following advice to pet owners:
– Be careful when making your own pet food. Most experts said they
hadn’t seen a pet get sick from inexpensive food; however, half said
they had seen pets become ill from eating homemade pet food, a growing
trend since the 2007 recall of some commercial pet food contaminated
by melamine. Dogs and cats each require about 40 different nutrients
in very specific proportions, so pet owners who insist on making their
own pet food should consider enlisting a nutritionist certified by the
American College of Veterinary Nutrition (www.acvn.org) or get help
from the Web sites www.balanceit.com or www.petdiets.com.
– Consider your pet’s age. Age-specific food is very important for
puppies, kittens, and pregnant pets, who have especially stringent
nutritional needs. Foods labeled either “for growth” or “for all life
stages” meet those needs. Foods “for maintenance” are for healthy
adult animals only. “Senior” is a marketing term, not a nutritional
term.
– Weigh the costs and benefits of wet versus dry food. There’s no
nutritional difference between wet and dry pet food, but there is a
cost difference. Wet foods contain about 75 percent water, so pets
need more to get the same calories, and that makes wet food more
expensive per serving.

Such entrenched views are very real and they exist in the dog world. The ostrich effect, if you will. Stick the head in the sand and ignore the real world, raise your head to see that things have changed but continue to insist that you’re right and everyone else is wrong.

Step forward Our Dogs, the canine newspaper.

Let’s get one thing out in the open right away shall we. It’s bad form for one canine publication to criticise another as there is an obvious conflict of interest that could question the validity and motive for any such claim.

So it’s bad form, OK. That’s a given. Here’s some bad form for you then.

The following is from Our Dogs;

OUR DOGS is calling on all breeders to stand up and be counted under this attack from people who do not seem to appreciate the many thousands of dedicated breeders who have health and good temperament at the heart of their breeding programme.

Make your views known…email letters to the Editor and also email the Dogs Trust and RSPCA with your views.

This call to defend against ‘attack’ is headlined: ‘Show world under attack from RSPCA’. The piece then goes on to ask “Do you feel the RSPCA should be the ones to overhaul rules and registrations or dogs shows?”

Let’s get straight to the point. The RSPCA hasn’t, as far as we’re aware, put itself forward as the ones to overhaul the rules and registrations of dog shows. In fact from the discussions we’ve heard, the RSPCA have been pretty clear in their position of telling the KENNEL CLUB and the show world in general to sort those issues out themselves. The RSPCA has withdrawn from Crufts out of frustration that those changes are not quick enough in coming. They haven’t nominated themselves as the people to get involved in dog show rules. They’ve made a stand on moral grounds, animal welfare grounds, lack of reform grounds.

And for that stand they find themselves being rounded on by the very people whom they aimed their concerns about. How very, very, very predictable. Sad but predictable. Way to miss the point guys!

Let’s tackle the other issue. “this attack from people who do not seem to appreciate the many thousands of dedicated breeders who have health and good temperament at the heart of their breeding programme.” – what utter, utter tosh! Personally I haven’t seen the RSPCA aim a single, solitary word of criticism against GOOD BREEDERS. Not one.

When will these people understand what the problem is? When will they finally get the message that the man in the street, the average dog owner looks at certain things they see happening via the medium of shows like Crufts and they find it highly unpalatable.  Like little Danny, the Pekignese who won Crufts best in show in 2003. The poor little chap could hardly get across the ring and when he was having his winner’s photos taken he had to sit on a bed of ice for fear of overheating. Let me send this message loud and clear: The average dog owner sees that and they flinch.

Nobody is attacking good breeders. Shooting the messenger is absolutely not going to fix the problems that are staring people in the face. The Kennel Club are doing their best to shoot the messenger and now the canine press is hitting out at the RSPCA and accusing them of something they haven’t even done or said.

While people continue to try and defend the indefensible and argue the toss about whether it was the Victorians who are ultimately to blame for the fact that some modern Cavalier King Charles spaniels end up in screaming agony as their brains are pressing against their skulls or whether the RSPCA is trying to muscle in on territory (dog show regulation) where they are clearly not welcome by ‘the locals’ – dogs will go on suffering and certain people will perpetuate the stereotype of some dog folk as weirdos with obsessions that don’t take account of the real world, science or some very, very basic health related fundamentals.

Ask yourself this, who’s side are you on: The right for dogs to live long, happy, healthy lives regardless of what they happen to look like or the right to carry on with outdated ideals that HAVE lead to hundreds of thousands of dogs suffering as a DIRECT result of actions that SOME breeders have taken?

Oh, and accepting that it is bad form to criticise another dog publication I’d better redress the balance somewhat – We have no problems with Dogs Today, in fact you should go out and buy it. There’s room for more than one dog magazine on your shelves.

K9 Magazine is calling on all good breeders to keep doing what you’re doing. And the bad ones, let’s hope you find it harder to have your dogs registered and endorsed by the Kennel Club as you have been doing for too many years.

Well, when I say ‘a little while’ what I actually mean by that is about 14 years.

For some reason this is one of those things that I always put off until next week. Some 728 weeks to be precise.

But why?

I honestly can’t answer that much past the fact that life is busy and something has always, always seemed to crop up ahead of me getting the shots done.

That was until November 2007. As with most things of this nature, having someone put a date in the diary and instruct me that I would be turning up at Venture studios in Nottingham was all that was required. No excuses, no appointments. Just be there, bring dogs, bring self. Even I can do that.

So I did.

And what a mistake. What a huge, huge error on my behalf.

At this point you’re thinking, oh no. What went wrong? What happened that was so bad it made me realise I’d made such a monumental catastrophe?

Well I can tell you, very simply. I really should not have put this off for 14 years. I should have gone and got that set of professional photos done years earlier. And how much do I regret it now? I regret it enough to say that since me putting off this – actually very enjoyable experience – I lost my best friend.

Jackson, my first dog and greatest friend in the world passed away in 2005. It never really hits home just how important images are until they, along with your memories, are all you have left. Everyday I am grateful for the few pictures I took of my beloved Labrador. They sit in their little frames dotted around the house and they bring a smile to face every single day, without exception. How can you even put a price on something like that? How can I ever forgive myself for putting off the opportunity to let a professional capture him on film for evermore?

So now with Chloe (Jackson’s daughter) and Mia, a new addition, myself and Kim arrive at Venture’s swish but warm and friendly studios ready to get some pictures done.

I’ve only ever been in a photo studio once before. I hated it. I hated it because I had better things to be doing, I hated it because I don’t particular like having my picture taken and I hated, ultimately, because the photographer thought he could break me out of my surly, visibly annoyed state of mind by climbing on top of a ladder and serenading me with a squeaky Gordon the Gopher puppet. Far from making me want to crack a smile, it made me want to crack the photographer.

This was real, old school family portrait stuff. All line up in an orderly fashion and stare at the camera (or Gopher) or arrange yourself in a pose which you would never actually find yourself in in real life. I really hated it. I think my distain came across beautifully on the finished photographs as well. I had skillfully managed to ensure I not only wasn’t smiling in any of them, I actually looked positively aggressive. Result. I never wanted them done any way.

So whilst it would be far fetched to say I was anxious when we got down to business at Venture, it would certainly be accurate to report that I was hardly on cloud nine in eager anticipation for what lay ahead.

I shouldn’t have worried. This experience was as far removed from my original experience with a Gopher wielding puppet I actually found myself enjoying the whole thing. And I’m a man who enjoys very little. Very little indeed.

Seeing the dogs in a new environment was fun. What made it better was the fact our photographer, Caroline was so incredibly friendly and skillful the whole experience passed me by without really realising if any pictures actually got taken. I was vaguely aware of some clicking and flashing but my eyes were more firmly fixed to my two dogs who were obviously comfortable enough to play their little hearts out whilst everyone around them looked on.

The result. The images we were able to select from were true representations of my dog’s personalities. Nothing staged, nothing ‘fake’, no Gophers in sight. Just Mia and Chloe looking like Mia and Chloe.

We were given a screening of the best shots Caroline had selected from hundreds and asked to pick our favourites from each pairing of similar images. Wow, that’s a hard job when you’re being asked to ‘remove’ a beautiful image of your much loved dog! Each shot was so well presented, as in fact was the whole screening process, it was obvious to me that we were being looked after by professionals who really love their work. They also happen to be very good at it.

Eventually we got down to a couple of choices. We went for a large, black and white picture which I have since entitled “Mia, featuring others” – the others being myself, Kim and Chloe. Mia is a very (very) dominant personality you see. I don’t even know if she means to be, in fact I often think she tries hard to be a little bit more subtle in the way she goes about things. The problem is, Mia’s version of a subtle is something akin to having Mike Tyson give you a gentle nibble on the ear rather than Chloe’s version of subtle which is more akin to trying to make herself become invisible in a white room.

Mia can’t help being dominant, Chloe can’t help being a little on the camera-shy side. It’s who they are, it’s how they are. And fantastically for us, it’s exactly how Caroline captured them in our photo session.

So if you’re thinking about whether to have your pet’s image and character captured forever, don’t be an idiot like me. Don’t put it off. You’ll never be able to put a price on the sheer joy delivered every single day by being able to look up at a truly professional and eye catching image of your own dog hanging somewhere in your home. I wouldn’t exchange my pictures from Venture for an original from van Gogh. That is how much I will cherish them.

Find your nearest Venture studio

or call 0845 121 1085

On behalf of Kim, myself, Mia, Chloe and K9 Magazine we would like to extend our sincere thanks to Caroline, Paul and everyone at Venture.