Dog food experiment.

[mrissa]

I managed to get back to sleep after taking markgritter to the airport this morning. I have not felt so well-rested in days, probably weeks. This is such a good thing. I will now go wear myself out with a workout, mowing the yard, and taking the dog for a long enough walk that she refrains from being bratty on the first day markgritter is gone. Maybe. We'll see.

We've been doing an experiment lately: we are mostly not feeding Ista dog food any more. Ever since she got so very sick in the fall, we'd been feeding her wet food. Dry dog food smells like dog food, no mistake, but wet dog food really smells like dog food. A lot. And getting out wet dog food twice a day was making our house smell very, very strongly of dog food to my nose. I love the smell of dog. Dog food, not so much. So when we had leftover grilled chicken and wild rice last month, I shredded some carrots into it and fed it to Ista. She loved it, and it smelled like chicken, rice, and carrots. (The "chicken-flavored" dog food smells like...wait for it...dog food.) So I've been browning meat, cooking batches of rice, and portioning it out into little baggies and tupperware in the freezer. When I have something leftover that she can have, I portion that out, too.

So far, she's happy and we're happy. No one is saying that she'll never eat dog food again, but no one is saying we'll never go out for a burger again, either. It's just better for her and us, so far, to mostly give her a mix of whole grains and meat and vegetables that we control, not a factory somewhere. Things like brown rice and ground meat are pretty cheap, and so far it's not taking me immense amounts of time and energy, which was the main thing that made this an experiment and not something we were definitely going to do: the other factors lean this way, but if it was going to mean that I became the dog's short-order cook, no way. But the thing is, she's a very small dog. Browning meat in any quantity makes a lot of meals for her. A big pot of brown rice will go a long way. So I don't have to do it very often in order to have plenty for her to eat.

Also the amount of packaging saved by using tupperware and larger initial packages of food instead of the wet packaged dog food is not inconsiderable.

One of the side effects of keeping this stuff in the freezer and microwaving it for her meals is that Ista sometimes "talks" to the microwave now. She doesn't bark at it, or growl. But if it's heating something she thinks should be her breakfast and she has awakened really hungry for whatever reason, she goes, "arroorroo arrell aroo?" rather conversationally at the microwave. Which amuses me.

I'm going to go out and mow the yard now, since it's finally not raining, and then we'll see what time I have before the concrete people are supposed to come and give me yet another estimate. I hope these people aren't as bad as the last sets of concrete people we've dealt with, but there has to be someone in the greater Twin Cities metro area willing to replace our front step, and apparently I have to be pretty persistent to find them. So persistent is what I will do.

Comments

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

oh! i volunteer with a guy at the co-op who only feeds his dog people food. i think it's a really good idea. i mean, you have no idea what goes into "dog food," but i've certainly heard horror stories and speculation. my co-volunteer says his dog's favorite food now is steamed chard. that makes me laugh.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

As you know, we fed Nala a home-made diet for many years, and she had very good health on it. We haven't done the same with chewie for a couple of reasons. One is that it's a significant amount of work and expense, especially for such a big dog. Another is that there are many more food choices than there were before. We are feeding him Solid Gold, which does not contain--and never has--any type of gluten, which is not an ingredient that a dog needs to eat. Their dietary requirements include zero gluten. They are also not full of corn, wheat, or other fillers that dogs shouldn't be eating.

One thing you should be aware of in feeding Ista is that dogs need a bunch of calcium to balance out the phosphorous that they get from their meat. If they eat meat without the right amount of calcium, they can get sick (or something). I hope I have that right. So what many people do is feed the dog raw meat with the bone (because cooked bones tend to splinter). You can also do it with egg shells, or grind up the bones and mix them with the meat. Some home feeders make it sound like you have to have a PhD, but dogs are carnivores and they don't have as many vitamin requirements as people do. Their bodies make more of the necessary vitamins, so really all you have to watch out for is that phosphorous/calcium balance. I have also noticed that prepared diets give dogs a distinctive smell. Nala's "doggie breath" disappeared as soon as we took her off commercial dog food. Chewie has a sort of fishy smell, probably because his food contains salmon oils.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'd heard the calcium thing, but thanks for making sure. And yah, this would be much, much harder with a big dog.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

I should have phrased this as a question. Since you didn't mention a calcium source, above, I assumed you weren't aware of it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

'sokay; I know you well enough by now to know that you're not sitting around waiting to pounce on anything I might have wrong or incomplete. You have earned the benefit of the doubt by now.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

(Not that I don't try to give the benefit of the doubt to utter strangers, of course.)

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

You can buy a powdered calcium supplement as well, which can be sprinkled into the food. I can't say how it affects the taste (to a dog's taste buds). Your vet might be able to give you a sample of some calcium supplements for you to try before you buy a big jar of it. :)

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

One of my other friends, cissa makes her own cat food--I think they still get some dry kibble for snacking, but the wet food she makes herself which sounds like a tremendous amount of work, but a *lot* better for them than the commercial stuff.

Alas, all of our animals (well, other than the little dogs) seem to have stomachs which must hold X cups of food--we couldn't switch the rottie to better dog food because she'd claim to still be starving to death if we only gave her two cups of good food instead of 4 of the cheap stuff. And then she'd steal food like crazy, even though the better dog food was just as nutritious as the cheap stuff, just missing all the filler. So she went back to the cheap food.

[sraun]

You might talk to Erin McKee or davidwilford - they're feeding their two dogs a raw meat diet. From what they say, raw chicken bones don't have the splintering problem that cooked ones do, and can be feed to dogs. Let me know if you'd like e-mail addresses.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks, but I'm not interested. The smell of raw meat is not better than the smell of dog food, for me, and also I like that we can feed Ista indoors, in a place where our goddaughter will be crawling soon, and not worry too much about whether it's been absolutely sterilized recently.

[mightyjesse.livejournal.com]

Mama and the Girls are all eating Purina Beneful, because they all seem to like it. (Strangely the Girls did NOT like Iams. Their tastes are somewhat pedestrian than that, aparently.)

Whenever Mama gets sick and is off her feed, I give her ground beef and brown rice, and she loves it.... Mind she still stands around in the back yard grazing like a cow, so I occassionally wonder if she could use some salad greens mixed in with it, but *shrug*... Whatever floats her boat. I never feed her ground beef and rice for long enough that I need to worry about balancing her diet myself. It's usually just a treat for when she appears to have an upset stomach.

I'm not sure if I ever sent you a link to the poisonous food list (http://mooreshaven.com/pets/dogs/safety/badfoodslist.html) but it's an interesting read. (Who knew that raisins could cause renal failure in dogs?! I always thought they were relatively harmless to everybody... Not only do they tell you WHAT is harmful but also WHY and HOW MUCH is a lethal dose, instead of just providing you with a long list of things you should be paranoid and superstitious about when it comes to your dog.

[mightyjesse.livejournal.com]

Jeez. I need more coffee. A dangling parenthesis and a missing word... *Their tastes are somewhat more pedestrian than that, aparently.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That's a good link, thanks! I'm sad about the avocado, because Ista desperately wants some every time I peel one, but it looks like that's one of the better-safe-than-sorry ones (I'd read about avocado a couple weeks ago).

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

That list seems highly alarmist, and it is not referenced at all. It lists peaches, apples, etc. because the pits contain cyanogenic compounds. But these compounds represent the exact same danger to human beings and we do not avoid those foods. Ditto stuff like raw eggs. If it depletes biotin, then human beings should avoid raw eggs for that same reason. But we don't. And many people use whole raw eggs as a staple for home made dog diets. Also the fatty foods item seems excessively strict. They do get pancreatitis more easily than humans, but a healthy dog should be able to handle the occasional sausage (in a proportionately sized dose).

[mightyjesse.livejournal.com]

It is a bit alarmist, but so are many of the lists out there - that's why I like the fact that this list tells you WHY something is listed... so that those of us who have minds that we like to use can decide whether or not something is worth the risk.

I've seen some of these items on other lists and wondered WHY they were on the list. For example, my dog eats apple peels all the time and has no problems with them. Now I know why some lists mention apples and other's don't.

So now I can just Note To Self: Remove pits from fruit before serving to dog. Also... No grapes or raisins with or without pits.

I also like the fact that they tell you HOW MUCH of something is lethal. That way I can NOT PANIC when my brother calls to tell me that my dog ate his Almond Joy off the coffee table.

:-)

[timprov.livejournal.com]

Yeah, missista shares my passion for Hungarian salami, so she gets little bits from time to time. It's not something I feel the need to worry about.

The list is worth it just for the hallucinogenic properties of nutmeg, though.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

I'm sure she would insist that she can handle her salami. :-)

[grndexter.livejournal.com]

Alarmist? Naaaah. Highly AMUSING, sure, but not alarmist. With all the weasel words like can/may/could/most/some, this list would be right at home on the fridge of your Common American Worrier Bird. I mean, who feeds their dog cigarettes or tobacco? And if the dog is dumb enough to EAT a corn cob, well, you need a different dog. The one you had (before it ate the corn cob) has had all the dog bred out of it. (Our dogs go into area corn fields and drag home gleanings and eat the corn off the cobs all the time. They NEVER eat the cobs.)

And dairy products? Raw eggs? Spoiled foods? What did you say your animal was? Certainly not a relative of the scavenger who lives in MY house and eats whatever dead rotten things she can find in the woods! Or the hunter dog to whom a turkey's nest full of raw eggs is a GREAT find! (She rolls in the dead things before she eats them BTW. It's like a scent candle at a party, I guess. )

Spoiled water? ROTFLMBO!!!

Virtually EVERY dog I've had over the last 55 years has had the sense to NOT eat stuff that's bad for it, and their guts can cheerfully digest salmonella (or pass it on through) and all kinds of stuff that would KILL me. (In Re salmonella: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=339295 Gotta love this - it talks about the BARF diet! ;-D) My dogs sniff stuff before they eat it. If they don't like the smell, they don't eat it.

For a good list of stuff that can, and might be likely to, hurt your dog ask your vet. This list is just wacky!

[temporus.livejournal.com]

You know what, when our dog got sick and was having problems, our vet told us to put him on a diet of white rice and boiled plain chicken, until his digestive issue sorted itself out. Seems to me that rice and chicken must be just fine for a dog if that's what the vet recommends whenever he's got tummy issues.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

My roommate's vet gave the same food "prescription" when her dog was sick.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Cats aren't the same as dogs, obviously, but when the vet put my cat on a chicken and rice diet it was intended to be a temporary measure only and the vet said it wasn't suitable for a long-term diet. I'm not sure why, but I'd guess that it's to do with the balance of carbohydrate to other stuff like protein and fibre.

Incidentally, I've also been told that dry pet food can be more reliable than wet food, in the UK at least. Apparently because it has a longer shelf life, the manufacturers are able to get a more constant supply of ingredients rather than having to rely on what's cheap that week. How scientific this is I don't know - my cat with the sensitive stomach was marginally happier with ordinary dry food than with the same brand of wet food, but both upset her stomach eventually (as did chicken and rice, annoyingly). She's happily eating a prescription dry food now.

[pameladean]

My youngest brother cooks for his dogs. He and his wife are vegetarians, so when my mother was staying with them once, she was quite startled to awaken to the savory lovely smell of chicken soup. He was boiling a chicken for the dogs and saving the broth for ground beef and rice later in the week.

P.

[talimena.livejournal.com]

Dog food really does smell awful, even to my not so sensitive nose. Cat food's bad, too. One of our cats needed a special diabetic diet, so I dealt, but it was not nice.

She's since moved on to frozen fresh food, I guess you'd call it, but my mom made food for our pets for quite a while and it worked well.

[talimena.livejournal.com]

I meant to add: I love that she talks to the microwave!

[grndexter.livejournal.com]

Our Lab/Border Collie cross is self-fed (the food is always out for her so she can eat as much or as little as she likes). She gets generic gravy train type dry food with powdered brewer's yeast in it (flea repellent - summer only). Then she supplements with whatever she can catch in the yard and the woods - the occasional rabbit & etc. And she takes her pick of "fresh" donations to the compost heap. :-D

[cissa.livejournal.com]

Our dog is bigger, so we don't make homemade foodfor her- though she gets the cats' leftovers. She's roughly double the size of all 3 cats put together, and I really don't feel like making pet food every couple weeks, which is what it'd take if I made it for the doggle as well as the pussycats.

Still, I think it's a great idea, and I admire you for doing it!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks!