Home Cooking, Advice, Tips, Websites?

go to Halo dog food and click on the resources page and then on dog food recipes there are quite a few good recipes there. I also use a vitamin and mineral supplement I researched for weeks trying to find one that did not have meat in it. My dog has a meat intolerance and if you are trying to eliminate sources of allergy you want your vitamin to be meat free the company is called Platinum Performance. The rewards of home cooking are many. I always tell people do it for 3 months and see the difference. If I was doing a home cooking elimination diet I would follow the dog food companies and just feed 1 meat and sweet potato. You say she has eaten chicken for a long time ,use turkey instead to see it its the chicken and include a good multi vitamin and mineral every day. To prepare one cup (8 ounces) of food: 3/4 cup (6 ounces) of meat and 1/4 cup (2 ounces) of vegetables. To prepare a larger amount: 6 cups (3 pounds) of meat to 2 cups (1 pound) of vegetables. Just make sure to freeze any food your dog wont consume in 3 days.

 Thanks Dawnben! I appreciate any pointers in the right direction. I'll definitely be using an alternative meat source if I go this route, since she's been on chicken for awhile. Besides, my crock pot hasn't felt any love in a long time, so this is as good as an excuse as any to break it out.

 Try Balance It's website, too. You have to pay for the recipes, BUT it's a great in between of kibble and the great, wide, out there. There's also premixes, like Sojo's, Grandma Lucy's, and Honest Kitchen that you add meat and warm water to. Those are SUPER easy.

Here are a couple of sites I like:

B-Naturals' article on cooked diets

Sample diets for dogs and cats

IMO the most important things to remember in a long-term home-cooked diet are (1) variety and (2) that you have to add calcium to balance the phosphorus contained in meat and veggies.  A multi-vitamin/mineral supplement will not provide an adequate amount of calcium.

In total honesty -- SOME-times we worry overmuch about nutrition.  We really do.  Now yes, sometimes things need to be tweaked, BUT my first dog that I "homecooked" for (she had pancreatitis young ... and it was tfhe reason the vet had me cook for her THIRTY-FIVE years ago!!)

Her diet?  ground beef, rice and an egg that I stirred in when I took it off the heat.  That is ALL.  She ate that for ... (seriously) EIGHTEEN years.  She lived to be almost 21. 

Balanced?  Nope.  Not by today's standards but it was what the vet gave me to do. 

Ok -- from there.  It may take you a year to do a full elmination diet and factor everything "in" that you may want to try.  And typically it starts out like for six weeks of something obscenely weird like peas and mashed potato.  Key word "novel".  This was actually the beginning elmination diet a friend of mine did with her JRT and it was monitored by Cornell University.  Yep -- but because she'd tried a gazillion foods, they wanted to use something he hadn't had before.

That said --

 So often we put them on chicken and rice because everyone knows they are BLAND, right??

Not if you go by the TCVM (traditional Chinese veterinary medicine) theory -- they'll tell you that's the worst two things to try!!  Because both chicken and rice are considered inflammatory foods (and that's one of the ways Meg founds out that Pirate really doesn't tolerate chicken well at all). 

So honestly your meat source might be something easy like ground beef.  Once I totally elmianted chicken **all** the time I realized it DID inflame Billy.  Not necessarily immediately ... but he's better off without it.

Seriously -- you may want to check out Monica Segall's Yahoo group.  Will do more later

_HOme Prepared Dog and Cat Diets; the Healthful Alternative_ by strombeck is a good start for a basic homecooked recipe.

Monica Segal has a booklet for homecooking.

Then there is something like The HOnest Kitchen, try thrive or embark or keen.

I homecooked for a while and I had a good system to make things in bulk and freeze several weeks at a time.

Now I'm down to doing HK in the morning and RMBs at night and it's working out really well for us.

 Thanks soooo much everyone. I really appreciate it! I'm looking around at all the information and hopefully I'll still be awake when the SO gets home so we can discuss it together.

I think home cooking will work. I'm home all day anyway, not that hard to throw something in the crock pot and my crock pot is plenty big enough to make a few meals worth in there, and just freeze what I can't use right away.

I just want to do right by Miss Personality! 

calliecritturs

Seriously -- you may want to check out Monica Segall's Yahoo group. 

 

 Absolutely; it's a great resource. Monica is very knowledgeable; the forward to her book " Optimal Nutrition" was written by a veterinary nutritionist at Ohio State University. I'm a big believer in making sure the diet is balanced, especially for a dog like Ari (and my Jessie), that already have compromised immune systems. Here's the link to Monica's yahoo group, K9 Kitchen;

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/K9Kitchen/

 You will find the forum is very friendly with knowledgeable members.

the_gopher

I think home cooking will work. I'm home all day anyway, not that hard to throw something in the crock pot and my crock pot is plenty big enough to make a few meals worth in there, and just freeze what I can't use right away.

I just want to do right by Miss Personality! 

I (and many others) cook once a week.  Then I portion it out.  I'd probably lose my mind if I tried to do it daily.

Monica Segal's Yahoo group is good.  So is Lew Olson's (B-Naturals):

http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/K9Nutrition/

Overall they tend to take different approaches to home-cooking.  Monica Segal's is the "make a spreadsheet and run all the numbers to make sure every nutrient, vitamin and mineral are fed in an adequate amount and everything is balanced."  Lew Olson's approach is more laid back.  Essentially, "Feed enough variety w/o worrying about the actual numbers and everything will balance out just fine over time."  I don't think there's anything wrong with either approach.  I'd use whichever you feel more comfortable with.

 Again, thanks so much! You guys rock. I'll definitely join that yahoo group.

Myra

Overall they tend to take different approaches to home-cooking.  Monica Segal's is the "make a spreadsheet and run all the numbers to make sure every nutrient, vitamin and mineral are fed in an adequate amount and everything is balanced."  Lew Olson's approach is more laid back.  Essentially, "Feed enough variety w/o worrying about the actual numbers and everything will balance out just fine over time."  I don't think there's anything wrong with either approach.  I'd use whichever you feel more comfortable with.

Myra is right -  I've actually known Monica for MANY years -- She gave me my *first* cancer diet for a dog about .... 12 years ago?  (we both used to write free-lance for the same website and have remained friends since).  Monica is good and she tends to appear to folks just starting out because veryone gets SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO nervous about "doing it right".  A lot of people tend to *want* that over-instruction and micro-managed system. 

Now me?  I've been cooking for dogs for ... 37 years.  WAY before it was cool or trendy.  And I do it way different now than I used to.  But I think with a lot of people it tends to have to evolve -- you get comfortable with it and then "learn".  In a lot of ways it's like feeding yourself and your family -- and some folks are super strict with their own diets .... others aren't.

But the thing to grasp is that honestly -- fresh "real" food is better.  Whether you do home cooked or raw.  And as long as you are teachable and you try to learn what works with THIS dog you will do fine. 

Sometimes I see a person start to homecook -- and they decide to do **this** -- and when it doesn't give them the results they want they get discouraged.  Or someone says "that's not balanced".  ... so ... you develop.  You learn more and you understand more.  But Rom wasn't uilt in a day -- and neither do you learn to do this in a day.