Now homecooking- gave up on commercial food

[Trowby]

Sage has always been finicky. We have tried about every high end food on the market. She had goopy eyes and her stool was often loose. So I decided to home cook for her. Costco ground round frozen patties, white and sweet potato , a cooked veg like green beans and cottage cheese. I add Missing Link and a probiotic. She loves it! Eyes are good, stool is perfect and she seems calmer overall. It isn't much work to cook her food and it's probably less expensive overall. The only thing I'm wondering is whether she needs a separate calcium supplement.
Anybody else out there throw away the cans and bags in favor of home cooking? What were your results?

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

We have lots of people homecooking, including my group co-administrator, Lynne Fowler, who lost her standard poodle to the 2007 food recalls. I know that Lynne swears by her results in terms of health. Some of us homecook and supplement with high-end kibble. Others primarily feed premium foods but add fresh foods regularly.
We have a lot of info here about homecooking, including a separate discussion section, and don't forget the DK Cookbook, which is our recipe group. There's a link to it on the main page of the Food Group.
If the Missing Link supplement contains the recommended calcium requirement, you should be okay; calcium is very important for dogs. The cottage cheese is supplying some, but it's important to know that only a certain amount of calcium can be absorbed at once. For humans, that's 500 mg. What this means is that if you take 1000 mg. of calcium at one time, half of it will go out in your urine, and you get no benefit from it. So if your aim is to get 1000 mg of calcium a day, you need split it up and take it at separate times. I have to assume it works the same way for dogs, although I don't know what the recommended amount is. Feeding twice a day helps, though.
Make sure you use different proteins, besides beef. Try chicken, fish, lamb, duck, lean pork, some turkey. Variety is the key to making sure Sage gets all the nutrients she needs.
As Lynne would say, welcome to the dark side, lol! Glad you've found a healthy way to feed your doodle!

[Lynne Fowler-Oodles of Doodles]

There is a large discussion here in the Food Group on Homecooking. Many of us are doing it now and there's lots of ideas there. I have been HCing for three years for 4 of my own dogs and the frequent foster. All are healthy, happy and I will never go back to crap in a can or a bag. Good Luck.

[Laura & Chewie]

Chewie eats Fromm's and I would love to substitute some of it with homecooking...I can just imagine how much he would enjoy it. Of course, he enjoys everything he eats. Can you start this when they are still puppies and growing (he is 7-12 months and has really slowed down in growth lately...he's a mini currently weighing 22-23 lbs.)? How do you know how much of the kibble to replace with how much homecooked?

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

I don't homecook per se, so I'm not the best one to answer this question. I just add some fresh foods to Jack's kibble. You could start that way. I have a pretty good background in nutrition, so I know the calorie counts of most foods, but it's easy to look them up. If a cup of your dog's kibble is 480 k/cal, that means there's about 120 k/cal in a quarter of a cup. So if I give Jack an egg, that's only about 80 calories...just a 6th of a cup. I just reduce his kibble by less than a quarter of a cup.
I'm sure the others will have better advice on amounts. And small dogs reach full growth younger than large ones, so you can start feeding adult diets earlier.

[Julie B.]

I would consider homecooking but I wonder if it causes your dog to be a bad beggar?? Once they get the taste of people food how do you prevent them from grabbing it off counters and begging under the table? (obviously training helps but still...) I have always been a strong proponent of giving my dogs "people food" for this reason.

[Laura & Chewie]

My Chewie has begged for people food since the day we got him. We never feed him from the table and somehow he knew.

[Lynne Fowler-Oodles of Doodles]

The food will not make him a beggar at the table, but they will beg at the stove as you are cooking. LOL I usually have 5 dogs around my feet waiting for dinner. If you don't feed from the table, they will not learn that behavior. It is a myth created by the dog food companies, that dogs can't or shouldn't eat...not people food...REAL FOOD. Guess what dogs ate before there was any dog food? Real, healthy, wholistic and natural food. Some of the ingredients in dog food is not only bad for our dog but is killing them.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

I have always made it a practice not to feed a dog anything ever anywhere but in his own bowl. Jack will hang around looking very interested, but he never "begs" or takes food from anywhere.
In the past, when my dogs never got anything except dog food, I had beggars anyway. They would practically crawl into your lap to snatch food if you had a snack while watching TV. Since I never gave them "people" food, where did that come from?
Dogs will not continue to do something that never pays off. If nobody ever gives them food from the table or the counter, they never expect it. Counter surfing is something else, though, and not related to what you feed them.

[Tammy & Gracie]

I have been homecooking for several months now with dramatic results. I take eggshells, rinse and air dry them. Then I bake them for 10 minutes at 300-325. This removes waxes on the shell. Then I grind it to a powder in the food processor. I add 1/2 to 1 tsp to any meal of Gracie's that will not include a raw bone. Good calcium and free too!