Food Friday: Homemade Dog Food, Round 1

So I finally got educated enough to make my first batch of (presumably) nutritionally balanced homemade dog food. I had a lot of help. Specifically, I joined the Home Cooked Dog Diets group on Facebook. They're like wizards over there. They're not all about sharing recipes, either. This is a place you go to learn how to develope and evaluate your own dog food recipes.

Nutrition Data

Ready to cook!

Nutrition Data is a free online tool you can use to evaluate the nutritional content of a recipe. You just search for your ingredients, add them to your recipe in the right amounts, and then his "analyse". The results include what percentage of the calories come from fat, protein, and carbohydrates. It also gives you a good idea of the calcium and phosphorus content so you can add supplemental calcium as needed. You can continually change a recipe and reevaluate it, so you can add or subtract ingredients, or change amounts, and see how it affects the analysis.

The food processor is your friend.

This tool is absolutely amazing because it allowed me to alter my dog food recipe on the fly. I went into the grocery store with the plan to buy the cheapest meat to start with. I expected this to be a bone-in pork picnic shoulder, a super fatty cut. Turns out they were having a special on boneless sirloin chops, a significantly leaner cut. I stood there in the meat department, fiddling with the recipe on my phone, until things looked right. Here is what I ended up making. This recipe has a fairly high fat content because my dogs do well with that. It is also grain-free, because quinoa doesn't count as a grain. 

Finding Balance

The Home Cooked Dog Diets group has an amazing library of files to help both beginner and serious dog food geeks. One of my favorites was a nutritional analysis of homemade bone broth. Turns out it has a lot more phosphorus than I thought!

The file I use the most so far is the checklist for a balanced food. It helps me remember that my recipe needs either fish or fish oil to make sure I have the right omega fatty acids in there. It reminds me how much calcium I need to add, which always matches the amount I calculate from my Nutrition Data results. There are quite a few other important bits in there, and between that list and the nutrition tool, I'm pretty confident in my ability to formulate recipes for my dogs. The Home Cooked Dog Diets group gave me a whole lot of confidence because they encourage newer members to post their recipes for critique. They also post various recipes from around the web for members to practice analyzing. So very geeky!

The Results

Portion control done right.

I baked porkchops and butternut squash in the oven, and cooked the quinoa, eggs, and pureed liver and veggies in a pot on the stove. The cooked meat and squash went through the food processor, and then everything got mixed in a big bowl with seaweed calcium, cottage cheese, and canned salmon. I could probably get away with chipping things finely for the girls, but Ru would definitely avoid veggies unless everything was very well mixed.

I weighed out everyone's portion, Godzilla and Zip got 3% of their bodyweight while Ru got 5% because chihuahuas are not fuel efficient. Everybody loved it! Even Ru! He dove right in and gobbled down the whole bowl. That never happens. Of course, I offered him the same thing a day later and he took a few bites and then lost interest because the only food he really loves is tacos.

Financially, this is not a viable way for me to feed my dogs everyday. Gone are the days when my beloved Brisbane and Ru could eat the same tiny portion of food and I could feed them both on half a cup of kibble a day. These days, we're going through closer to 4+ cups, and the cost of food is a much bigger consideration. This batch of food cost me $20 to make, and fed all three of my dogs for three days with a bit left over. It was a lot of fun to make though, and I do plan to include more home cooked meals in their diets. If you are interested in making your own dog food, I highly recommend the Home Cooked Dog Diets group as a wealth of information!

Book Review: Dinner Pawsible

Dinner Pawsible is a cookbook for people who want to make healthy and nutritious meals for their dogs and cats. It is a collaborative work between a veterinarian and a pet food safety advocate. Both have been using these recipes to feed their own animals for years, and they want other pet owners to understand how manageable that really is.

Photo by Erin Koski

I really like the premise of this book. Most people don't eat dried 100% complete and balanced food at every meal. We provide our bodies with all the things they need by eating a wide variety of foods over time. By not limiting ourselves to a narrow diet, we can avoid nutrient deficiencies and compensate for less-than-perfect foods.

It makes sense that we could do the same for our dogs, fellow omnivores that they are. All we need to do is provide them with enough variety, and things should sort themselves out, right? A lot of homemade pet diets are limited to just a few ingredients, though. Homemade pet food tends to be deficient in one way or another, whether it's calcium, phosphorous, or vitamins it lacks.

Dinner Pawsible is intended to take all the guesswork out of feeding your dog a homemade diet by providing an entire book of recipes made from a wide variety of ingredients. There are directions on how to choose, store, and prepare each ingredient, from fish to liver to carrots. Readers are advised to use as much variety as they can when planning meals for their pets. The book promises that not only will our pets will be healthier and happier eating real food cooked just for them, but it will also save us money.

We saw a squirrel.
Photo by Erin Koski

Before purchasing Dinner Pawsible, I wondered if there would be any recipes in there suitable for Brisbane and his chicken/turkey/duck/egg allergies. I went as far as emailing one of the authors, and was told that there was absolutely nothing wrong with substituting pork, lamb, rabbit, ostrich, or any other Briz-safe meats I could get my hands on. Cool.

My enchantment at this new, less expensive way of feeding my beloved dogs lasted until the book arrived and I began reading the ingredient preparation instructions. The book instructs us to use organic free-range grass-fed everything, and includes ingredients like oysters. Do you have any idea how much oysters cost?! Knowing that nutritionally the differences between organic and conventional foods are basically non-existent, I decided to stick with meats I could actually afford.

I actually read the entire book cover to cover in a few days, just to see what sort of substitutions I would need to make. I knew I could pretty much swap any meat for any other meat, but what was a good substitute for eggs? Next I wandered over to the book's Facebook page, where several other people had similar questions. The general attitude of the authors was that any vegetables would do, eggs could be left out or added in all willy nilly, and that following the recipes to the letter wasn't really in the spirit of the Dinner Pawsible.

"Wait a minute," I thought to myself. "If any meat and vegetables in any amount will do, what's the point of even having recipes? I thought this stuff sort of mattered a little." Still, I was determined to cook for my dogs. When I went to actually select a recipe, I realized something I had missed on my first read-through. The recipes in Dinner Pawsible are VERY carbohydrate-heavy. They are all based on either rice, pasta, or beans. For those who wish to avoid grains, the authors recommend substituting sweet potatoes. The ratio of these to actual meats just feels wrong, though. These recipes generally have something like 2-3 cups of cooked rice/past/beans/vegetables and maybe half a cup of meat.

I've been feeding my dogs mostly grain-free foods since I discovered raw feeding over a decade ago. While I've softened my stance on grains and their place in canine diets, it's tough to shake the feeling that a decent portion of their food should be meat. Dinner Pawsible wants me to feed one part meat to six parts starches and veggies, and that feels wrong. No, I have nothing to back this up other than a gut feeling.

Between the unappealing idea of feeding my dogs rice with a little meat mixed in, and the number of substitutions required to make the recipes suitable for my allergy dog, I can say my enthusiasm for Dinner Pawsible has waned significantly. I will still spice up my dogs' dinners with raw and cooked meats, cottage cheese and yogurt, cooked vegetables, and maybe even oysters, but this wasn't the book I needed to make the jump into cooking entire meals for my dogs on a regular basis.

Do you ever cook for your dogs?