Cooking dogfood

My dog loves sweet potatoes or butternut squash raw and cooked. I just cook the chicken, then toss veggies (and sometimes rice) in the chicken water until mushy and add the shredded chicken back in.

The potatoes might help with runny poop. It's probably easier to cook for such a small dog than the bigger ones I save the cooking for him for when he's sick, which luckily hasn't happened in a very long time.

Also, he used to have runny poop a couple of times a week and I think our current main food helped that a lot. I feed him a mixture of Iams (green bag, mini chunks that he loves) and Halo Spot's Stew chicken (tiny bites and it seems healthy and less likely to the contamination issues lots of bigger brands have). These are both dry food. He doesn't like most canned food but he's digging the BG (before grain) stuff.

I agree with OQ - having a monster dog makes cooking for him nearly impossible. I'd love to feed him a raw diet but I have no place to actually feed him (and he loves to bring his toys/treats in my bed to eat).

Just keep telling yourself that, DogLady

My dog would probably be happy if I just replaced his meals with crunchy peanut butter. He's goes to his happy place with the kong.

He also loves it when I put his meals in the waggle. LOVES it. Maybe Oscar needs one. It's great for rainy or busy days, when he needs more inside entertainment.

Nah, I think it's cool and tons better for him then the processed shit I feed Oscar.

Anastasia Beaverhausen wrote: [quote=brokechick][quote=Anastasia Beaverhausen]If you can swing it, throw him an raw bone (yes, even chicken provided it's RAW). Great for their teeth and digestion.

actually, chicken bones are NOT great for digestion, because they can splinter and lodge at any point along the digestive tract, or smaller fragments can get bunched up and cause an obstruction in the stomach or small intestine.


RAW RAW RAW. Cooked chicken bones will splinter and fragment. Raw bones are more flexible. It's perfectly fine to feed a dog a size appropriate raw chicken bone.

well, no . . . but they are your dogs and you can feed them what you like.

i'm not unfamiliar with the BARF diet, and i don't have any strong objections to it or any raw food diets for animals as long as they are carefully implemented and well-rounded. i do advise against chicken bones, even raw, generally because there is far more potential for trouble with them than with other, harder kinds of bones. i will say that it depends a lot on your individual dog and how he or she eats. some dogs will chew a bone well enough, but some will scarf it down in three cracks, and even a raw chicken bone can be very sharp when it breaks. if you have a bigger dog that swallows a bone while it is still in fairly large pieces, they can get stuck if they wind up poorly positioned at any point on the way through. some people feed their dogs this way all their lives with no issues whatsoever, but some people lose a dog to bloat or internal injury, or they have to go through the stress of fairly expensive surgery. i worked in veterinary medicine for ten years and saw it go both ways. all i know is that i would do what i could to keep anything that had even a tiny potential for harm out of my dog's mouth, and i have seen bones (even raw chicken bones) do some significant harm. that is the advice i would give to a friend, so it's the advice i chose to give here. honest, i am only trying to be a good neighbor.

it was a giant, 24-hour emergency hospital and we took a lot of referrals from other places, so i'm sure the number of cases we saw of that nature was higher than average just because of the number of patients we saw--and remember that i'm saying i saw a lot over my whole ten years there, not one every day or anything. but it was enough to make me nervous about it. my family had a lab/shepherd cross who could eat ANYTHING--bones, rocks, corncobs, live chipmunks, pounds of partially defrosted bread dough, an entire frozen pork shoulder still mostly in the plastic--and never bat an eye. i mean, obviously we didn't encourage that diet, but despite our best efforts she proved to be a pretty impressive creature, digestively speaking. but the degree of indestructibility varies widely from dog to dog. it is a choice you have to make for yourself based on whatever you think the best information is, i guess.

Toadette, I'm no expert on giardia but I know some folks with confirmed cases in their dogs and it was suspected that they got it from eating mud/grass in the park. I haven't really read about transmission, though. Mabye it survive, say in a puddle that your dog walks through on the sidewalk and then get to your dog via the pup grooming when you get home.

Even if it's not giardia, that kind of sick is awful. It's so sad to see your dog feeling so sick and draining for the owner to take them out at all hours. It's probably a time when wee pad training is handy.

My boxer also developed the same problem after we had left him at a very reputable kennel. Nothing anyone can do about the pups slurping from the same puddles or bowls.

I cooked for him for a while (rice with chopped turkey, rice with chopped beef and wheat bread with eggs) until one of my friends clued me into the BARF diet.

He is a happy, healthy 80 pound slobber machine - who only once in while gets a hankerin' for fiber - like the dining room table, the kitchen cabinets, the runners along the staircase. If only I could stop his tooth grinding (he has separation anxiety after we lost our older doggy) and unapproved fiber consumption he'd be perfect. Dumb - but perfect.[/url]

That's awesome that you are cooking your dog's food. Lucky dog!

http://www.vetbalance.com/index.php?/carnivore-vs.-omnivore.html

We give our dog a fair amount of raw meat with his dry food. Sometimes when we're at the store my bf gets all excited to "pick out something gross" for the dog. I think last time was chicken hearts.

Carmen, I was thinking of the cooking as a sick diet but I agree with P&K that it's probably not healthy to be his regular diet unless you do some research and add more stuff. Maybe try a good dry food and add the cooked as a treat.

all of our dogs ate whatever we did. Our vet told us from the very beginning that if it's healthy for us, it's ok for the pets. All meats and veggies, rice and some macaroni. But never anything with sauce or gravy because dogs, like us, can pack on the pounds. So far so good, except for the occasional can of Pedigree when we're travelling and can't cook. Our Yorkie Poo Molly will only eat that and a certain flavor, so we make sure she gets what she wants.

well, chocolate isn't really *healthy* for anyone, even if it does have many, many wonderful qualities. but you're right, it can be downright dangerous for dogs, along with raisins/grapes, onions, and other things that people might not think about as red-flag foods. it's important to plan carefully and do some homework.

That vet is totally wrong. You cannot compare how humans eat to how dogs eat. Dogs are carnivores, with short digestive tracts. They have a far greater tolerance for raw meat and other things because of that. And they have different nutritional requirements, PERIOD.

Phyllis
Pooch & Kitty
http://www.poochandkitty.net

Mougar wrote: [quote=molly9094]Our vet told us from the very beginning that if it's healthy for us, it's ok for the pets.

But what about chocolate, onions, raisins, dairy, garlic?