Does anyone here feed only "real" food?

[Breanna]

My dog's breeder posts a lot on facebook about real food and how much better it is than kibble. Crush was showing some signs of food allergies-some itchiness, occasional foot biting, and lack of interest in her food. Last week I started making her food. The first time it was rice, chicken, peas, olive oil, eggs, carrots, and blueberries. This week was the same, but with turkey. I've never seen her so excited to eat and now she eats it all rather than picking at it throughout the day. Does anyone else make their dog's food, and what ingredients do you use? 

[Vivian & Mojo]

My Doodle gets one meal a day of Origen grain-free and the other meal is either raw Darwin dog food or cooked food I make for dinner without seasonings, either beef, chicken or fish, yams and fresh steamed veggies & a spoon of plain yogurt.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Which is fine because the Orijen is supplying the nutrients he needs, so you don;t have worry about a vitamin or mineral deficiency or imbalance. The Darwin's and all commercial raw diets we recommend) are nutritionally complete as well. 

About one-third of JD's diet is homemade chicken and sweet potatoes. 

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

I considered making all of his food following his IBD diagnosis, but he would have needed 8 cups of the homemade food recipe per day in order to get enough calories,  and I do have to leave the kitchen occasionally, lol. 

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

There are some members here who make their dog's food, but it's not quite as simple as just using food ingredients. There are vitamin & mineral supplements that your dog must get from his diet, and you need to use the correct proportions of all of them, as well as the right percentages or macronutrients and the right amount of calories. The diet also need to include a good source of Omega 3 fatty acids, extremely important for all dogs but especially for dogs with allergies or itching. Homemade food is much lower in calories than kibble and on average, you need to feed twice as much. If you want to make your dog's food, and that's a perfectly great idea, I strongly recommend that you use a good recipe approved by a veterinary nutritionist. We do have a couple here in the group, and a few recommendations for books that give you solid information on homemade food for dogs. Looking at your ingredients, there are several  important nutrients missing, including calcium, vitamin D, and Omega 3 fatty acids. (Olive oil doesn't contain any essential fatty acids, it contain Omega 9s, which the body can make on its own and does not need to obtain from diet.) 

However, it is very doubtful that Crush has food allergies. Despite what you read on FB and other websites, food allergies are relatively rare in dogs, accounting for only 10% of all allergies in dogs. Lack of interest in food has absolutely nothing to do with food allergies. Itching and foot biting is 9 nines more likely to be caused by an inhalant allergy than to anything in a dog's diet.  And, if a dog does have food allergies, it really has nothing to do with kibble, homemade food, raw food, or the type of food period. An allergy is an immune response to a specific protein which enters the blood either through inhalation (pollens, dust mites, molds), through ingestion (food), or through injection (insect venoms). The immune response is going to be triggered by that specific protein regardless of what form it's in. In other words, if a dog has an allergy to chicken, he is going to react to raw chicken, cooked chicken, dehydrated chicken, and the processed chicken in kibble. Period, fact, 2+2=4.  So homemade food is not the answer to a food allergy, however healthy it might be. For food allergies, you have to eliminate the specific allergens from the dog's diet completely. How can you know what those are?  You can't; there is no accurate test for food allergies in dogs. What you can know is that it is virtually impossible to be allergic to something you have never been exposed to, so if your dog has never eaten let's say, pork, he cannot have developed an allergy to pork. Therefore, when food allergies are suspected, the dog is put on a food trial, which is a limited ingredient diet utilizing a protein source and a carbohydrate source that the dog has never eaten. It makes no difference whether that diet is homemade or kibble. An example of this type of diet would be Acana's Pork & Butternut Squash kibble. 

(And the ingredients in the kibbles we recommend are "real", lol. Just like the oats in my breakfast cereal are real, even though it's processed and I didn't make it myself.)  

There are other things you can do to help a dog with suspected allergies. I'll post some links below. 

[simon]

We make our food for bella...

Basically it's a stew... Pick a meat from the cheap shelf and any and all veg except onions.. cod liver oil, egg shells, tomatoe puree, dog gravy, rice, porridge all in a slow cooker and jobs a goodon...

She has a bowl mixed with kibble twice a day...

This has just been started a few minutes ago.

[Kate, Mel, Tenley & Harper]

I don't make the main course because I don't trust myself to know everything he needs nutrition-wise... but I do have a lot of fun making homemade treats! We had a bad experience with a treat Tenley had and ever since then I have stopped giving him treats with too many ingredients. The easiest way to avoid that is to just make my own!

Here are some of our favorites:

1. Take a big carrot, peel it, and soak it in homemade chicken broth (not the kind from the store, that kind has onions in it). Let the carrots soak in the broth in the refrig over night. In the morning, dump out the broth and freeze the carrots. They love them! I haven't made this in a while though because I stopped feeding Tenley chicken. I need to think of another broth to use. But up until that point, they have loved them! The only thing I wish is that they lasted longer.

2. Sweet potato cubes. These are a HUGE hit, and easy. I just cook sweet potato, then put it in an ice cube tray and freeze it! Can also use pumpkin but mine like sweet potato more.

3. I've heard of people making their own chicken and beef jerky with dehydrators-- I want to try that some day.

4. One of their favorite treats is the "crunchy" part of a leaf of romaine lettuce. They won't eat the leafy part but they love the crunchy part. 

5. Tenley would do just about anything for sweet potato, so I also use this for training. I make a "paste" with sweet potato and a tiny bit of peanut butter just to thicken it up. Then, I stuff it in these GoTub's (http://www.amazon.com/humangear-hg0220-GoTubb-Medium-Count/dp/B0095...) and then we use it for reinforcement while training. It is great and he loves getting licks of this sweet potato and peanut butter paste.

6. If I need a REALLY high value treat, I mix cream cheese and diced liverwurst and put it in those little containers too. It reeks, but that is what the dogs love about it. I think Tenley would probably do a backflip if I asked him to.

[Katie & Roo]

Sweet potato cubes! I haven't thought of that. I'm doing this tonight for Roo. He's obsessed with Sweet Potatoes.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

FACTS ABOUT FOOD ALLERGIES

[Joan Bollaert]

 I would never make food for my dogs unless it was for an illness where they needed me to.  It's too much of a committment and I don't always feel like cooking for my family much less my animals!!!    I love to cook too but don't want to HAVE to. Plus, as Karen mentioned, I'd be afraid they were missing out on the nutrients supplied in good dog food (like Orijen).   The cooking routine is just not for me and don't want them to get used to that if anyone else ever has to take care of them or if they need to be boarded.  Dry kibble is good enough and certainly easy enough.  

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

You have made some excellent points, Joan. In addition to the nutritional issues and the real possibility of a dog developing a nutritional deficiency, plus the amount of time and sheer volume required to feed an exclusively homemade diet, (a dog needs double the number of cups per day of homemade food as he would need of most high quality kibbles, just to supply enough calories to maintain his body mass), both of which are especially important for growing puppies, there is also the issue of the dog never being able to be boarded. And what if something happens to you, or there is a natural disaster and you have to evacuate? Or you just want to take a road trip with your dog? 

There are excellent commercial alternatives to kibble for those who feel it isn;t good enough for their dogs, lol. Honest Kitchen's dehydrated raw formulas, for one. All you have to do is add water, which is always available. It doesn't even need refrigeration, and you can add your own meats or whatever you like. And there are many others. 

[Breanna]

Lots of good points here. I think I'll just mix the home-cooked food with kibble, so she's getting some real stuff but also enough calories and nutrients. 

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

I think that's a wise decision. :)

Make sure that at least half of her diet is kibble. 

I would also make sure that you are feeding a grain-free, nutritionally dense kibble with a very low Omega 6:3 ratio, like Orijen. Many people have seen improvements in their dog's skin & coats just from making that change.