There is a wide variety of dog foods on the markets these days and taking the time to research and choose a good wholesome one for your dog will help to keep them active and fit.

Most people just go to the store and buy whatever dog food is currently on sale without giving a thought to what might be inside the bag. Instead of putting their wall first, they should be learning how to choose a good healthy food for their dog. Cheap may be better on your wallet, but just know that you get what you pay for. If you truly care about the health of your dog, do a web search for sites that rate and analyze dog food brands. I found the best keywords to be "dog food rating." Once you find a few sites, it will only takes a couple of minutes to find out which dog foods are best for your pet. A nice site that I found is dogfoodanalysis.com. It rates and reviews most dog foods based on meat and cereal content.They are just one of several online sites available for research and have been around for a couple years. Look for the independent sites, as the company supported ones tend to favor their brands as the best choices. Hmm, wonder why! Most sites will rate the products using some sort of scoring system like a 6-star, or bone, rating system. These sites usually rate most dry and canned dog foods on the market, but be aware in order to find the healthier brands,  you might find yourself traveling to a pet store to buy dog food as the better brands are not normally available in the supermarket. As you might imagine, 6-stars are for the top-of-line and of course the most expensive products. It's up to you what you choose, but I recommend not getting just anything off the store shelves as many products contain far too many fillers to keep your dog healthy. A quick read of some of the reviews and you'll see just how much filler and preservatives some of these bargain buys contain. You may be saving on the food bill now, but when your pet’s health declines because it isn't getting the required nutrients, you'll be spending a lot more on the vet bill! The 4- and 5-star products only cost a little more than many store brands, but are considerably more healthy for your pet.

Active dogs need a lot of protein content in their food. Many popular store brands contain an over abundance of grain fillers and preservative. These may fill your dog up, but they’ll not provide the proper nutrients your dog needs to remain healthy. So read the labels, the first couple of ingredients should be meat by products not grains or chemicals. A word of caution, too much protein in a sedentary dog’s diet will make them quickly gain weight and cause health issues. Therefore, you need to consider your dog’s activity range when selecting a product.

Just remember to take several days to adapt your dog to a new food, When converting to a new food, use a mix of their old and new food for several days. Then increase the percentage of new food each day until you're feeding them nothing but the new stuff. Keep an eye on your dog’s stool for a couple days to make sure the new food is not disagreeing with their tummies. You may find some brands are too rich for your dog and will have to select another. Feed your dog right and they'll love you for it. Heck, our dog used to be a real finicky eater and always seemed to get sick when she finally ate. Then we changed to a higher quality brand and she eats it up as though she was getting a bowl of treats.