Dog food quality varies enormously and directly affects health and welfare outcomes. Understanding nutritional requirements, label reading, and evidence for different diets enables informed feeding decisions.
Dog nutrition is a welfare foundation that underlies all other aspects of dog health and quality of life. A dog fed a nutritionally deficient diet develops health problems that cause chronic suffering regardless of how well other welfare needs are met. The challenge for dog owners is that the commercial dog food market is complicated, with enormous quality variation, marketing claims that outpace evidence, and emerging dietary trends like raw feeding and grain-free that have welfare implications that are not fully understood. Evidence-based feeding that relies on AAFCO-certified complete diets appropriate for the dog life stage, with body condition score monitoring to adjust intake, is the most reliable approach for most owners.