"I am the Allower of my own Wellbeing"

A natural health newsletter written by Sherry Dell, PhD, CN

Volume 4, Issue 1
August, 2010

The Basics of Preparing your Dog Food from Scratch

My dogs are in the 80-90 lb range.  This is what I prepare for them and feed it twice/day.  So adjust accordingly for size and of course for your dog's symptoms.  Remember this is what works well for my dogs; yours might prefer different or no grains, different meats, etc.

To prepare ingredients:  

To make individual portions:  

  Snacking:

  I feed at 8AM and 5PM, with a snack at mid-day.  Snacks vary from cottage cheese, to plain yogurt, to leftovers or small portion of their own food, to Honest Kitchen brand snack biscuits (gluten free).

  When time doesn’t allow:

My dogs like Honest Kitchen brand dehydrated foods and; I keep these in the house and add a can of sardines or tuna and maybe smaller amounts of veggie puree and/or grains

My dogs also like Nature's Variety grain free Instinct dry kibble; especially the salmon meal formula.

·     Canned meats and fishes can also be a helpful short cut once in a while; mix in with their regular quantities of grain and vegetable.

Multi-vitamin/mineral:

My holistic vets say it’s important to add a multi-vitamin to home-made meals.  I use a chewable one from Vetri-Science.  They love them as treats.  I also give chewable vitamin C, about 1000-1500 mg/day.  I also add oil to their food; flax oil, cod liver oil or other essential fatty acid liquid mixtures such as Body Bio oil from Elyte brand.  Get advice regarding the dose depending on the size of your doggy.

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I have written in the past about the problems of the Standard American Diet (SAD); empty calories from highly processed food, low to no essential fatty acids, low to no fiber, and high amounts of rancid, saturated fats and trans fats.  But the standard american human diet is much better than the standard american dog diet. In fact, much of the mass-produced dog food in the United States is made literally from garbage.  And by garbage, I mean things that would not be considered edible by humans or pretty much any other species (1) (2).

John Anderson's summary of the pet food industry published in Alternative Medicine in 1998 (http://www.sniksnak.com/ac/petfood2.html), is sadly still current and let me warn you it isn't pretty.  Though the FDA writes pet food regulations similar to the regulations for human food, it does not inspect pet food manufacturing facilities.  Rather, it relies on the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) to enforce the regulations.  The AAFCO has no regulatory power which essentially means that the FDA rules are self policed by the manufacturers themselves.

Not surprising then that 2007 brought about heavy pet food recalls; wheat gluten contaminated with melamine (an industrial chemical; yep the same stuff used to make kitchen dishware) was used in hundreds of pet food products and caused kidney failure and death in cats and dogs (3). 

The gist of the story is that the wheat gluten came from a single Chinese company but ended up in over 100 brands of pet food.  A company called ChemNutra Inc., based in Las Vegas, bought 873 tons of the gluten from the Chinese company and sold it to three pet food makers and one distributor that services the pet food industry. 

We, the consumers, might have trusted that testing of materials used in the pet food should have caught this problem before it was used in manufacturing.  However, the contaminated gluten used is the proverbial tip of the iceberg when it comes to pet food ingredients.  According to the New York Times article, "Unraveling the Pet-food Mystery (April 2007)," "rendering plants, which boil down dead animal carcasses from slaughterhouses into fats and proteins, sell cheap material that often ends up in pet food. The "meat" in your cat's kibbles could be any kind: there's no law against even using rendered material from cats and dogs in pet food. Plants can mix in anything from road kill to supermarket deli meats, and investigations by KMOV-TV in St. Louis and the Los Angeles Times have suggested that pets killed in animal shelters just might make it into the slop. The Pet Food Institute, whose members create most of the dog and cat food sold in the U.S., told the Times that pets are not allowed in their products. But the FDA has admitted to finding "very, very low levels" of sodium pentobarbital — the chemical used to euthanize animals — in some brands of dog food." 

Many of you know that I am a life-long dog lover and owner.  But it wasn't until the early 1990's that I was able to put together the equation of my dogs' health and their diet.  My beloved golden retreiver, Scotchy, was 10 years old and in failing health when I began to research and try better quality foods in his diet.  The improvements were nearly immediate and he lived happily another 4 1/2 years.  And this was with only a change to better quality dry food.

Our next doggy, Elwood, was a purebred german shepherd with many digestive problems and food allergies.  To learn how to help him I began studying dog nutrition in earnest, attending holistic veterinarian nutrition classes on a regular basis.  I learned that each dog is unique and so has unique nutritional needs.

And now with our dogs Sally Jane and Jedd, I've come to realize the only way to know for sure what is in their diet is to make it myself.  And I've also learned that my dogs' symptoms can direct me nearly immediately as to whether or not the food I give them is good for them.  For example, Jedd's coat develops dander within a few minutes of ingesting a food that doesn't suit him.  

Happily, today there are many, many wonderful resources to help you provide an optimal diet for your doggies.  I'll list some here (4) (5) (6).  And in case you're still daunted at the thought of preparing food from scratch, there are some dog food companies that produce foods that just might work for your dog friends.  Just be observant to what your dogs' symptoms tell you about your choices.

Some companies that I've had good luck with include: 

_{(1) Not Fit for a Dog:  The Truth about Manufactured Cat and Dog Food, Fox, Michael, et al, 2008.}

_{(2) Foods Pets Die For: Shocking Facts about Pet Food, Martin, Ann, 2008.}

_{(3) Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine, Nestle, Marion, 2008.}

_{(4) Homeopathic Care for Cats and Dogs, Hamilton, Don, 1999.}

_{(5) Made out of Love, Postins, Lucy, 2009.}

_{(6) The Whole Pet Diet: Eights Weeks to Great Health for Dogs and Cats, Brown, Andi & Pitcairn, Richard, 2006}

_{(7) The Healthy Dog Cookbook, Jonna, Anne, et al, 2008.}

_{(8)  Reigning Cats and Dogs: Good Nutrition Healthy Happy Animals, McKay, Pat, 1992.}