What's Cooking?

We finally decided to take the plunge and try a totally home-cooked diet for Roxie. The massive pet food recalls earlier this year combined with ongoing recalls for treats and still more foods continue even to this day, so that's what prompted us to make this decision for Roxie. So for the past couple of months, Roxie has been eating many of the same things that we eat, but with extra supplements that she needs. The bonus to having her eat home-cooked food is that I cook more often and we're all eating better foods now. We do a lot more simple things for dinner like meat, veggies, and sweet potato and those are all things that Roxie can have. We usually go to Whole Foods and buy a bunch of organic meats, fruits and veggies for Roxie and cook a bunch of stuff up all at once, puree the fruits/veggies, and freeze all of it to use over the course of several weeks. We add the calcium powder and other supplements when we warm up her meals. It's really not too much extra work preparing her foods this way. Of course, it helps that she's not even 17 pounds! Feeding an 80 pound Doberman would be a different story, but we'll cross that bridge if/when we get to it.

It was pretty scary at first, taking the responsibility for cooking Roxie's meals. It's not as simple as just putting some stuff in her bowl. You have to pay attention to certain things, like the calcium:phosphorous ratio, and make sure that there's a balance over time with all the different nutrients that a dog needs, so it's key to have a lot of variety in the foods you're providing for your dog. A dog's diet will be primarily meat, but they also can and should have fruits/veggies, dairy, and organ meats such as liver. We try to get her meals to be about 60% meat, 15% fruit/veggies, 15% dairy, and 10% organ meat. That seems to be within the suggested parameters of what a good balanced diet for a dog should look like, based on the research I've done on this. I also add fish oil so that Roxie gets her Omega 3 fatty acid, Vitamin E, B complex. I would also like to find a good multivitamin for her and add that from time to time.

The first time we gave her an entirely home-cooked meal, Roxie sort of looked at us in disbelief as if to say "Is this really all for me?!" She got over her disbelief quickly though and dove right into her meal, ~I think~, before we realized we made a "mistake" and took her food away. She's always loved her food, but once she started getting home-cooked meals, she's become even more enthusiastic about her meals. She's had all sorts of things... chicken, turkey, beef, fish, pork, buffalo, calf's liver, eggs, broccoli, sweet potato, carrots, green beans, squash, zucchini, apples, plums, peaches, strawberries, cherries, raspberries, kiwi, yogurt, cottage cheese, and kefir, just to name a few! I think her absolute favorite is when it's salmon night. I usually buy her a piece of salmon big enough to last a few meals during a two week period. She absolutely goes wild for it and can't eat it fast enough!

I think the best thing about feeding home-cooked is that we know what is going into each of Roxie's meals because we've prepared them ourselves. Her coat seems shinier and her skin isn't as flaky. These are just the things we can see on the outside. The food should be doing great things for her body inside too. And seeing her so enthusiastic about her food is really a satisfying thing. The reward is to see her go back to her empty food dish again and again throughout the day just to take a few more licks of any speck of food that might have been left behind. It's definitely worth it!


Mmmmmmm! Cottage cheese!