As a result of the economic downturn, lots of us are struggling to pay our bills at the moment. One outcome of this is that we have to cut back on household expenditure.
One area for review is how much we spend on dog food. If you are a responsible dog owner you will be feeding your dog according to it's weight but you may be tempted to look for cheaper dog food to save a little on the household budget.
You may be able to do this but you need to very careful. If you have already achieved a good balanced diet for your dog, changing it may result in a gradual deterioration in your dog's condition and a future vet's bill may wipe out all the savings you have made with cheap feed.
Another possibility is that you reduce the amount of feed you give your dog but make it up with scraps and leftovers from your own meals (assuming that you can still afford to eat !!!!!!!).
This course of action is not wrong but again you have to be careful as some human food is bad or even dangerous for dogs (e.g. Never,Never feed your dog cooked animal bones, especially chicken bones as once cooked the bones become brittle and the resulting splinters can damage your dog,s digestive system)
You need to avoid onion, chocolate and certain other foods. The best thing you can do is to speak to your vet and ask which human foods to avoid and which are safe for your dog to eat.
I appreciate that all this takes a little trouble to sort out but if you balance this against the greater trouble and cost of vet's bills and expensive special diets to correct damage done by poor or even dangerous diets I think it is obvious what you need to do.
