The Healthy Hound Cookbook: Over 125 Easy Recipes for Healthy, Homemade Dog Food--Including Grain-Free, Paleo, and Raw Recipes! (3 page)

Did you know that too much of most nutritional elements can be just as harmful as too little? Yes, even too much of a good thing can lead to health problems. Here’s some food for thought:

• Too much protein can overwork your dog’s kidneys and liver as they work to remove the excess protein the body cannot absorb. (Too little protein can lead to growth problems for puppies.)
  
• Too much fat in your dog’s diet can lead to, you guessed it, excess poundage on your pup! Too little fat, though, results in a dull coat and flaky skin.
  
• Too many vitamins can stress your dog’s organs and even lead to bladder stones, while a lack of vitamins will make your tail-wagging chum tired and weak.
  
• Fiber also plays an important role in a balanced diet. Too much fiber leads to gas. Too little? Loose stools. Fiber is one component of your pet’s diet that’s easy to see (and suffer from) a lack of balance.
  

As you can see, obtaining the right balance involves many factors—but there are big benefits. Along with being in control of the ingredients that compose your dog’s diet, you can also vary the diet according to your pooch’s personal palate. Work closely with your dog’s veterinarian to be sure your dog is getting everything he needs.

We love cooking for our dogs. Why? Maybe it’s the opportunity to really know what’s in their food and to select healthy ingredients. Maybe it’s the cost savings over premium treats. Or maybe it’s just the boundless enthusiasm with which they greet our cooking.

Dogs don’t worry about presentation. They don’t concern themselves about the look of the plate it’s served on. Dogs just want to enjoy the food you’re giving them. They relish it with an enthusiasm that tells you that you
are
the next Julia Child.

But we’ll be honest: It does take time to cook for your dogs. If you’re considering a homemade diet, be sure to consider your schedule. Especially if you have large dogs (like we do), the time spent cooking the amount of food you need for a homemade diet is substantial. There are ways to streamline that cooking process, including cooking in bulk. Here are some tips for making the process as easy as possible.

Cooking your own dog treats and/or meals
can
be a money-saver—as long as you think ahead and shop with a plan. Here are some tips for buying ingredients inexpensively:

• Look for “last chance” meats, fruits, and vegetables.
  Although they’re still safe to eat, these foods that are close to their expiration dates are often deeply discounted at grocery stores for a fast sale. In the case of fruits and vegetables, their ripe or slightly overripe state may make them less palatable to humans, but they’ll be more easily digested by your dog.
  
• Check local farmers’ markets for bruised or slightly damaged fruits and vegetables.
  (Many markets welcome well-behaved dog shoppers as well!) Locally grown produce isn’t just an eco-friendly choice, but a great way to save money and get foods at the peak of freshness. Buying bruised produce can be a great way to save on dog meal ingredients; many farmers will even give them away, especially if you’re making another purchase.
  
• Buy less desirable cuts of meat.
  Organ meats are inexpensive and make an important component of your dog’s diet. If you are feeding a homemade diet, up to 10 percent of your dog’s meal should include organ meats: liver, kidney, gizzards, and tripe. (Of that 10 percent, no more than half should be liver.) While these may not be at the top of the list for human shoppers, they’re very popular with dogs—and they’re an important nutritional source:
  
  • Liver:
    Liver is a great source of vitamins A and B as well as iron. While it’s a wonderful food (and a real favorite with most dogs), limit liver to just 5 percent of your dog’s total diet so that your dog doesn’t get too much vitamin A.
    
  • Heart:
    Heart is actually considered a muscle meat, not an organ, so you can add more heart to your dog’s meal without worry—which is a great thing because it’s one of the most reasonably priced meats and one of the most nutritious. Beef heart contains thiamin, folate, selenium, phosphorus, zinc, CoQ10, vitamin B, amino acids, and more.
    
  • Tripe:
    Cow stomach lining (although tripe can also refer to sheep, pig, goat, and deer stomachs) is sold in commercial grocery stores—but it has been washed and bleached and isn’t nutritional. (You’ll see that the tripe in the grocery store is sparkling white; it’s used to make menudo.) Green tripe, rich with nutrients from the cow’s diet, is made from the lining of the cow’s fourth stomach, the abomasum. Green tripe isn’t sold by butchers. Many pet parents feeding a raw diet will purchase frozen or dehydrated green tripe from commercial vendors.
    

If you decide to commit to a homemade diet—especially if you have large dogs—buying in bulk is a great way to save money. Meat is the ingredient that makes the most sense to buy in bulk—it can be expensive, and freezing it requires very little prep work. Regardless of whether you’re preparing a cooked or a raw diet for your dog, buying meat in bulk can simplify meal preparation and save money at the same time. Consider these ideas:

• Share a bulk purchase. Often, homemade feeders who live near each other band together to purchase a side of beef or other large cut as a group.
  
• Ask other homemade feeders in your area to point you to good local meat sources: meat processing plants, wild game processors, and local butchers.
  
• Visit ethnic markets, which can be an excellent source for many organ meats and less-common cuts that aren’t usually available at large grocery chains.
  

Although your home kitchen has everything you need to prepare your dog’s meals or treats, if you decide to get serious about a homemade diet, a few things can make the process much simpler:

• Electric food grinder:
  A food grinder is a very handy way to prepare an appropriate mix of meat and vegetables. Grinding your own meat is much less expensive than buying ground meat, and you can cut away the fat to prepare a healthier meal. Although less expensive grinders are available for $30–130, only heavy-duty commercial grinders in the $300–400 range are capable of grinding bones. Even with the more expensive models, grinding bones may void the warranty, so check with the manufacturer before purchase. Without bone in the meal, you’ll need to supplement your dog’s food. (More on supplements in
  Chapter 3
  .)
  
• Food dehydrator:
  Buying dehydrated meats and vegetables is convenient, but it’s expensive! Make your own dehydrated jerky and chews on the cheap with a food dehydrator at a fraction of the cost. A food dehydrator is also excellent for drying vegetables and fruits during the peak season for use in later meals. Prices start at about $35 for basic dehydrators, although models with more controls can range from $200–300.
  
• Food scale:
  To ensure that you are feeding your dog the proper amount of food every day, it’s important to measure his food, both in terms of cups and weight. A digital kitchen food scale ranges from $10–50.
  
• Freezer:
  Small chest freezers that provide storage for bulk meals for your dog start at about $200, ranging up to $1,000 for top-of-the-line models.
  

Dogs share many of the same nutritional needs as humans, requiring many of the same vitamins, minerals, proteins, and fats, although in different quantities. Like an infant, whose diet you completely control, your dog looks to you for all his nutritional needs. (We won’t talk about the grass he scarfed down on your walk … or the lizard he caught in the backyard.) In general, you are responsible for the six nutrient groups your dog requires: vitamins, fat, minerals, carbohydrates, protein, and water.

As with humans, obesity is an epidemic in the dog world. The reason? Most people feed their dogs too much food. Feeding guidelines on bags of commercial food are just that: guidelines. They’re written for unneutered adult dogs; spayed and neutered dogs have lower metabolic rates and need slightly less food. Also, many pet parents don’t measure their dog’s portions, instead filling the plate or (worse) “free feeding” with a bowl full of food that the dog is allowed to eat at will throughout the day.

Instead, it’s best to measure your dog’s food for twice-daily feedings. (Feed puppies three to four times per day.) The rule of thumb is that your dog should eat about 2.5 percent of his weight per day. You’ll adjust this up or down depending on your dog’s activity level and if you’re trying to maintain his weight, trim a little off, or put on some weight. For a 100-pound dog, that translates into about 2.5 pounds of food per day, or 1.25 pounds of food per meal.

This is, of course, a very broad guide, one that varies with the food you’re feeding, your dog’s activity level, your dog’s age, and any relevant medical conditions. (If your dog will be outdoors hiking around with you during cold weather, he’ll need more food. If your dog is pregnant, she’ll need more food.) This table gives you a general baseline to start from, though, and you can work from there, as you see if your dog is still hungry after the meal or if your dog is gaining/losing weight.

Although indulgent dog guardians may sometime fail to notice that their pooch is packing extra pounds, it’s easy to ask your veterinarian if your dog might be overweight. You can then monitor your dog’s weight with a periodic hands-on examination by feeling his ribs. If you are able to feel his ribs, he is usually not overweight. Your dog’s ribs should feel much like the back of your hand. Also, look at your dog from above and see if his waist is visible: It should show tapering from behind his rib cage toward his tail. From the side, you should also be able to discern an upward “tummy tuck” in his abdomen area.

Whether you are feeding a homemade or a commercial diet or a combination of the two, it is also important to establish a feeding schedule for your dog. Your objective is to make sure your dogs receive proper nutrition without becoming overweight. Just as with humans, dogs that are overweight become susceptible to various health issues, including extra stress on their joints, lethargy, liver disease, and diabetes.

Although an adult dog may be able to receive adequate nutrition from one large meal daily, breaking it up into two smaller meals served twice a day may reduce the chance of bloat, especially if your canine wolfs down his food. Plus, it gives you twice as many chances to bond with your dog via your homemade food! You can also use mealtime as a quick training exercise, asking your dog to sit and wait politely for your “okay” signal before diving in to enjoy the meal.

If you look at most commercial dog foods, you’ll see the phrase “complete and balanced” splashed on the packaging somewhere. This means that the food has been formulated to include the key nutrients in your dog’s diet in balanced proportions: vitamins, fat, minerals, carbohydrates, protein, and water. A complete and balanced commercial dog food means that it is complete as it is, with no supplements required.

It’s important that dogs be fed a complete and balanced diet—but that doesn’t mean that each and every meal be completely balanced, as it is with commercial foods. Our own human diets balance out over time. Through the week, we all eat a wide variety of foods that give us nutrition in different forms. Together, they come together to provide a complete and balanced diet. We normally don’t eat one particular meal that answers all our nutritional needs. The same can be done with our dogs. Your dog’s diet can be diversified from meal to meal, balancing out over the breakfasts and dinners served throughout the week.

However, you will generally need to add a supplement to your dog’s diet—if not a general multivitamin, then at least a calcium supplement because dogs have a much higher need for calcium than humans. Unless you feed your dog raw bones or include nutritional-grade bone meal in their food, you’ll need to offer a calcium supplement. (It’s also very important to have the correct calcium-to-phosphorus ratio. Talk with your veterinarian about a range for your dog; in general, the ideal range of calcium to phosphorus is about 1.5 to 1.)

In this book, you’ll find a recipe for making your own eggshell calcium, which many pet parents prefer over bone meal because bones can store impurities (and because bone meal is often made from bones that have been used to make gelatin, so many nutrients are already missing from the bones). As with most things related to dog nutrition, the recommended amount of calcium varies, but expect to supplement with about one 600 mg calcium supplement per 10 to 15 pounds of adult dog. If you’re mixing homemade and commercial food, only add supplements for the portion of homemade diet, not the total.