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Michelle Koch
Doc, If I recall correctly, I believe you have briefly mentioned this in a couple of your videos (you didn’t go into a whole lot of detail, it was only an “honorable mention”), but what are your thoughts on people cooking for their pets, or even raw food diets (BARF, Prey Model, store bought prepared, etc?) There is also freeze dried dog food now. What do you think about homemade dehydrated dog food? I’m about to embark on an exclusive outdoor lifestyle, camping in the “boonies” for several months with my dog. I’m trying to think of ways to consolidate space, as a big 25 lb. bag or plastic bin of kibble takes a lot of space, and will also attract bears and rodents and insects. Not to mention, I will not have climate control except when I’m driving down the road. Storing kibble in a hot vehicle/camper/tent is more likely to damage whatever nutrients are in it, as well as the preservatives, and make it go rancid, wouldn’t it? I realize a fresh, raw diet would mean I need space for some means of refrigeration – hence the question about the possibility of dehydrating my dog’s (fresh) food. I don’t know… just noodling some ideas. In addition, since my dog will also be living more like a captive wolf, and not so much like a pampered penthouse pet, she will undoubtedly benefit from an upgrade in food quality, wouldn’t you agree?
To my fellow students: who out there is a chef for your pets? What means do you use for your canine culinary cuisine? Do you feel your pets are healthier for it? Is it significantly more expensive? (I currently pay approximately $50 per month on kibble) And does it take up a lot more room in the refrigerator? (I will not have a freezer, only an ice chest or small 12 volt cooler) Has anyone tried dehydrating their own pet food?
For cost reference: My dog will require approximately one pound of food per day (1/2 lb twice a day). Red meat is expensive! If you were camping out in the wilderness for several weeks or months, would you do homemade dog food, or kibble? Or something else? Bear in mind, it will be summer, and it will be hot. The first half of my journey will be in humid regions also. My intended destination will be hot and dry. (I will be working out there, just in case y’all are wondering).
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Paige
I use many different methods for my dogs, depending on their needs. I will start with the easiest. I freeze dry raw meat and at $10-15 for a bag of freeze dried snacks it is a bargin. I also use raw dog food from a local farmer, but it is expensive. So instead of using it as a meal I decrease the kibble and use a scoop. They love it and it can’t be any worse for them than the yuck they eat on our walks. And I believe it has benefits. I have also cooked my dogs food and then frozen it. This is the calculator I used: (REDACTED By Auto-Moderator Robot)/. Probably the most cost-effective, but time consuming. I also have dogs with allergies and use Royal Canin as it is easy and works. Simply put my suggestions would recommend taking some of each kind for the ups and downs of your trip, so that your dog has what she needs. You might want to consider some herb supplements as the trip sounds stressful, and her immune system might become stressed or if she eats something that she is not used to. I would carry some frozen water that will be cool for her to drink during the hot days.
PMR
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This reply was modified 2 years, 1 month ago by
Paige.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by
HGH I.T..
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I could most definitely START my trip with frozen water – and even use it in my cooler, in place of bagged ice — but I will have no means of freezing more water after that is used up. Good point about the journey being stressful. We journeyed from the west coast to the east coast (where we are now) three years ago, and I know it took a toll on her – it took us two weeks, and she didn’t eat much at all! I plan on taking our journey west even more slowly, if I can leave on time. I think you’re right about offering a variety. I currently use a small amount of canned food mixed with water as a topping (more like gravy), but cans take up a lot of room, and add weight to the vehicle, so maybe I can at least dehydrate some fresh food and use that as a topping, with hot water added to reconstitute it. That would be sure to add some extra nutrient value to the kibble too, don’t you think? Perhaps, when I stop to replenish my own groceries, I can pick up enough ingredients to make “dinner for two,” and simply cook enough for the both of us now and then. I think she would enjoy that, and it would help to give her a little health boost for the journey. Oh! And at times when my eyes are bigger than my stomach, I can use my food scraps as a meal for her, or as a topping on her kibble! (For those worried about feeding my dog “people food,” I don’t give my dog processed foods – Since I am gluten free, I have grown accustomed to cooking “from scratch” – so the people food my dog receives is high quality.) Meanwhile, I found some videos on You Tube by a Dog Nutritionist, so I’m learning more about what my dog’s nutritional requirements.
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Dr. Patrick Jones
I think it’s always a good idea to ask what the body was designed to eat.
Wild dogs don’t do much cooking so raw food diets have some significant benefits. If you could make or buy freeze dried food, that’d be easy to pack around and not very susceptible to spoilage. Throw some water on it at dinner time and feed her. :0)
Don't use herbs or combine herbs with medications or use them during lactation or pregnancy without talking with your healthcare provider.
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Dawn
Hi Doc, this is another good place to ask if Teasel is ok for dogs as I read from a respectable site that a dropper full twice a day can be used as a preventative for Lyme. I’m East Coast and we have it really bad here plus another tick that causes people to have an allergy to read meat (meaning you can’t keep it down).
Also, have you heard about that new dog tag that uses frequencies to deter ticks, mosquitos, and fleas? (Containing silicon dioxide particles encoded with specific frequencies that are emitted over time, once the tag is placed on your pet’s collar, it will synchronize with your pet’s own unique biological frequency.) I bought it but now question using it, lol.
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I haven’t used teasel in dogs and there isn’t really any data on it. So, I don’t know. My suspicion is that it’d be fine. But, again, no real data to base that on.
Don't use herbs or combine herbs with medications or use them during lactation or pregnancy without talking with your healthcare provider.
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Sydney Alix
We’ve been feeding our dogs a mixture of raw meat (which makes up the bulk of their diets; we mainly get it from our local butcher for free-butchers can have a lot of excess meat scraps!) and a traditional Turkish cooked dog food called Yal (it’s basically cooked flour; you can use grains like whole wheat or barley, but definitely not processed white flour. We also add a small amount of a good quality, mineral rich salt like Redmonds or Pink Himalayan). We add raw or cooked eggs (from our chickens), goat milk (from either our goats or from a local dairy), granulated dried kelp (for vitamin supplementation), shredded veggies (like carrots or occasionally beets), greens (like fresh dandelion), and dog-safe table scraps.
We’ve been feeding this diet to our dogs for several years, and all of them are very healthy and thriving. The only caveat would be for pregnant or nursing females; in that case they definitely require more nutrient supplementation. For example, in such cases we give a good quality fish oil supplement, and that seems to really help.This diet has been a very healthy, cost-effective way to feed our dogs, and we’ve been very happy with it.
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Theresa Gwiazda
The Yal diet was developed by poor shepherds in the fields of Turkey. They couldn’t afford to feed anything else. It is good for a while but better than commercial diets for sure.
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I’m very interested in moving to homemade meals for my dogs. One has terrible allergies that popped up around age 4. It got better but now it has been a year straight and with all my trials I have no long term wins during this period. I had her tested for allergies with hair and saliva so I have a list of potential allergens to work with. If you can point me in the right direction, a link, or a formula that you’ve had good results with, that would be sooooo super fabulous and helpful. My dogs are big dogs, one is 90 lbs and other is around 82. Thank you for anything you can offer to help me on my way.
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Carrie Cottrell
this is what i do for my dogs too. I lightly cook the meat though as raw makes them sick
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Hi Carrie,
This is interesting that a completely raw diet makes them sick. I am curious to know what happens? Like are they sick right away or is it the next day?
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NICOLE BURKHART
This definitely s subject to follow as I’m trying to use more natural foods and ways to keep our senior dogs healthier.
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Definitely the best thing you could do for your dog, esp. older dogs. I switched my medium sized dog a long time ago that was having liver disease and the vets said he wouldn’t live that long at around 10 years of age. He had spots and tumors on his liver. He ended up living until he was well over 13. I had been toying with raw diets for a while, so I started doing heavy research and made the switch and I have never looked back! Feeding a species specific diet to our animals is the best thing to do for the health of our animals for sure! Commercial dog foods are chock full of preservatives and carcinogens, not to mention the awful food ingredients that dogs have huge issues digesting, like corn. Dogs can’t digest corn. I am always amazed at the amount of overweight dogs that I see at the vets and the vets don’t seem to have issues with it. And then there are all the allergies that commercial dog foods cause even the so called grain free ones. I have helped people’s dogs get healthier by just switching their food to what they should be eating- species specific. Also, helped my neighbor with her horse to realize what horses should eat to be healthy and recently helped my Kangal breeder to realize it too who is doing the switch as much as possible. I often tell people who are skeptical about it to look at the teeth of their animal and tell me what do you think those types of teeth are designed to eat? This often leads them to the correct conclusions on what should be fed to their animal. I love helping people help their animals get healthy! Email me direct if you need to talk about it – theresagwiazda@gmail.com
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Amy Horton
This isn’t necessarily helpful for traveling, but I have been making a homemade dog food using cubed cooked chicken breast and cow’s liver, combined with lightly steamed vegetables such as sweet potato, carrots, peas and green beans. If I have blueberries or pumpkin on hand, I throw that in too, along with lightly cooked eggs, spinach, a little cooked rice (not much), black beans, etc. Then I freeze portions into cupcake pans, pop them out and store in freezer bags, taking out just what I need for the day. Our pup loves it!
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jean.humes@yahoo.com
I am new to this course and can not wait to take a dive into making my dogs home made dog food
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Yes!!! My dogs are on a raw diet for around 10 years now and I have never looked back! The health benefits are huge and of course they love it too. I have helped many people to switch over and they have seen huge benefits, one of the biggest benefits of a raw diet switch is if the dog has allergies they usually go away. They stop chewing on their bodies and I have experience a dog with totally closed up ears within 2 weeks their ears have totally cleared and had an amazing transformation in health issues. The one dog tested positive for being allergic to meat! I had told them this is simply unbelievable. Dogs are meant to eat meat. So after much convincing they started slowly with one meat at a time and found out that the dog wasn’t allergic to anything that was human food, just commercial dog food. :/ Not shocking.
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Can you help me switch? I took a class on Raw Bones diet which was a raw diet for dogs but I am still getting so much conflicting info and my vet, personally does not agree with raw diets, so I get a little confused. I just started making my dogs’ meals to get them off of commercial dog foods but that was just my first step and I would like to learn more to move towards Raw food for them. Thanks for any feedback you can offer!
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Yes! I can help. Can you email me directly and I can send you an attachment of a book that a nutritional vet did that is much more eye-opening. I have been researching this subject and have successfully been feeding my dogs for the past 15 years or so on raw. It’s not as complicated as it may seem. You can be as elaborate or as simple as you see fit and what fits your needs. All my dogs have been medium-large (labs) to extra large breeds (kangals) and have lived well over 13+ years. My Kangals I have now I have had since pups and they have been on raw diets their whole lives with me. Please email me directly at the above email address so I can send you that e-book.
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Jennifer Pangelinan
Would you be able to send me a copy as well? I can’t seem to find your email address though…
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Yes Jenifer, Please send me an email to theresagwiazda@gmail.com so I can send it out of my drive. Thanks!
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Hi Dawn,
I wanted to reach out and see how it’s going with raw? Please text me directly 2402993135. Thanks!
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Ann Denison
I would love to know what you’re doing. My girl is allergic to most proteins. Right now I raise rabbits to feed her, that’s the only meat that doesn’t cause major chewing on her feet, dragging her butt, and rubbing on the wall. We feed raw, ground rabbit (organs and bone included) mixed with Honest Kitchen freeze dried fruit and vegetable mix but lately she has less energy and seems a little “down”. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!
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Wanda Breighner
@Theresa I’d love some help too. I did raw diets in the past but not as they should be done. Our home just welcomed a rescue. The info they gave us was that she’s a 4 month old mini labradoodle. At 25 lbs at that point we’re sure she’s older and may also be mixed with a schnauzer. I immediately tried to do raw. She won’t touch it! I’ve finally got her to eat a raw eggs in her kibble but that’s it. Since I bought the kibble, she’s scratching nonstop. I know it’s the food but she won’t eat anything else-no apples, carrots, beans, corn. As much as I’d love to feed her organic grass fed like we eat, that’s not a financial option. Help!
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Just seeing these posts. Please email me directly at theresagwiazda@gmail.com It’s just easier and more direct then I don’t risk the chance of not seeing your post. You can also text me 2402993135.
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