Are you serving up all the nutrition your dog really needs? The truth is, probably not. Even the most devoted dog owners — the kind that shower their dog with Beanie Babies, Kongs, and other tokens of devotion — don’t spend a lot of time pondering the type of food they’re feeding their pets. In fact, more often than not, even loving dog owners go for the cheapest hard-food kibble sold at the local grocery store.

Then there are a few dog owners who just feed their dogs human leftovers. Both practices don’t really take the dog’s needs into account and can really hinder her from reaching their optimum level of health. As almost pure carnivores, dogs digest food differently from humans and need different levels of nutrients. But you can almost guarantee that serving your dog just the dry food won’t give her all the vitamin she needs.

It’s true, the grocery store food is incredibly cheap compared to some of your other options, such as a premium dry food, or carefully thought out “BARF” raw food diet designed for dogs. But eventually every owner finds out that this is a false economy. The cheap food is crammed with corn, byproducts, and other substances that are useless (or worse) to your dog. Without the nutrition she really needs, you’ll find yourself going to the vet more often, and you may find years shaved off the time you get to spend with your beloved pet.

You’ll probably find that the best sources of really healthy dog food are probably not in the pet aisle at all. In terms of hard food, you’ll find many online dog food retailers that offer the kinds of choices you’ll never see at your local pet shop. By shopping online, you’re likely to find some of the best choices in truly nutritious, even organic food for your pet — the kind derived from human-grade meat, not the post-processed leftovers that none of us like to think about.

An even better choice for many dogs whose owners have the time for it is a raw food diet based on fresh, raw meat and veggies. This diet takes some research and diligence to get right, but it’s the diet your dog evolved on over thousands of years, and it will help keep her happy, healthy and strong for a good long time.