Here at Dog Food Heaven, we review dog nutrition products regularly and understand the responsibility it implies.
Your dog is probably a prominent member of your family. Their nutrition is crucial to you if you take time out of your day to seek nutritional guidance.
That is why we hold ourselves to the highest standards when making recommendations. We thought you would be interested to learn how we select the products you find in our guides.
We do:
Here is everything we look for before we feature a dog food product on our pages.
Look for regulatory authorities’ approval
Pet food is submitted to many regulations that help ensure it’s safe for your dog to consume and meets nutritional requirements.
But surprisingly, not all foods are approved by all organizations.
Because all these government agencies don’t always agree on what constitutes healthy dog food and because they cover different areas, for maximum safety, we look into its approval ratings from ALL the following institutions:
Extensively scour through user reviews
It would be easy for brands to cherry-pick high-quality food samples and send them to us for review for maximum grades.
That’s why we rely on “the wisdom of the people” to make our minds about a particular brand’s product quality.
We extensively scour positive and negative reviews about all products we recommend online.
We also often reach out to these customers to dig deeper, understand their experiences, and reflect them in our content.
Study the product line & brand history
Have you heard the famous quote “History repeats itself”? Well, we believe this is also true for dog food.
This is why before recommending a new product line or brand, we dig through their history and operations extensively to try and assess the risks for you.
Here are just a few things we look into when considering a new product or brand:
- Brand & product line voluntary recall history
- Manufacturing plants and their recall history
- Any FDA warnings or recalls
- Place of manufacture
- Brand affiliations
- Any name change to “hide” past horror stories
- Any recent change of ownership / manufacturing processes and recipes
Scrutinize Nutrition data & seek veterinary approval
Before a product is added to our pages, we have a team of qualified vets carefully reviewing the nutritional information provided by the manufacturer AND the feed test results run by independent labs.
This is how we ensure that any product you find in our buying guides has an excellent nutritional profile that will cover all of your pet’s needs.
Consider the breed, size & age of the dog
Because our guides often cover specific situations like breeds or health issues, we ask our vet team also to study & confirm that the food recommendations are the best for the given guide.
Analyze the brand’s marketing claims
Brands tend to make much health-related marketing claims to sell more food.
We review their marketing material and debunk it point by point to ensure you know exactly what you are giving your dog.
Understand the product’s pricing & positioning strategy
There are dog foods for all budgets and diets. We try to cover most of them in all of our guides, so you will always find a budget option, a value option, and a premium option at least.
We also try to cover special diets like high/low protein, grain-free, etc.
Look into the delivery options
What’s the point of finding the perfect dog food if you can’t get it into your hands or you need to wait ages to get it if you don’t live in a big city?
That’s why we review average delivery time and cost, country delivery coverage, and return policy if you change your mind.
Companies that offer better terms are ranked higher on our pages.
Take your feedback into consideration
All our articles have a rating widget at the end where you can share what you enjoyed and did not enjoy about the piece.
Every few months, we review all articles’ feedback and update them based on what YOU told us could be improved.
We don’t
Things you will NEVER find on Dog Food Heaven.
Take sponsorship fees
Many brands are ready to pay us good money to be featured higher on our pages but always refuse these offers. We feel it’s our editorial responsibility to feature the best product to you because we love dogs more than money.
Post anything without thorough research
All our articles went through a thorough research process, and we don’t make recommendations lightly. So if you read it on our site, you can be sure it’s gone through all the points above, and you can trust the advice.
Go against veterinary & state agencies’ advice
It is trendy these days to be defiant against health organizations or medical professionals, and WE DON’T DO THAT. If a vet tells us he wouldn’t feed a given food to a dog, it won’t be on our site, regardless of our personal opinions or beliefs.