The other day I ate dogfood for lunch. Don't be horrified. It was homemade dogfood, a version of a recipe for doggie diarrhea I'd found in a book by a holistic vet. For this miracle diarrhea cure, you cook chicken thighs, diced sweet potato, and diced potato in just enough water to cover everything, for about an hour. This cure has worked almost overnight on our dog, Maxie, more times than I can count.
So I was curious to see if this remedy would work for humans too. And it did... But that's really beside the point. My point is this -- and I have several friends and colleagues who agree with me -- why should my beloved dog eat corn starch and chicken meal out of a can when my husband and I feast on healthy, homemade, whole foods-based meals?
Several years ago, after we lost a second dog to major health problems at a relatively young age, I began to experiment with making our own dog food. Unfortunately, this was short-lived because of the time and effort (and freezer space) involved in producing freshly-made dog food in bulk. And this was about the time that a number of companies began producing higher quality pet foods, so we easily fell off the bandwagon for the sake of convenience.
My interest in the subject was renewed when Maxie began to have chronic diarrhea that defied the vet's diagnostic skills, and could not be resolved by changing her canned food to a different brand or flavor of canned food. Besides her health, I was a little concerned about our carpet and getting back the deposit on the apartment when we moved out. Dr. Goldstein, the aforementioned holistic vet, referred in his book, The Nature of Animal Healing, to the aforementioned diarrhea remedy. It worked on Maxie, and now she's hooked.
However, because I don't think she can subsist on chicken, sweet potato and potato alone, we are now experimenting with a different recipe, one developed by a fellow nutrition student at Bastyr for her own dog. I will find out if Laine (pronounced ly-na) is willing to let me publish it here...
In the meantime, if I'm ever stumped over what to have for lunch, I can always have what Maxie's having.
First, I want a dog just like yours. Do you know what breeds she is made up of? And amen to feeding our beloved pets something that will keep them in good health. I find it hysterical (in the true sense of the word)that people feed babies and pets highly manufactured foods with lots of fillers. If we don't want our babies and doggies to be healthy...well you can tell I'm about to rant. I went one step easier with my dogs and gave them leftover table scraps. Since we often eat whole grains like quinoa or super vegetables like sweet potato, I'd just save up the leftovers and combine it with some raw beef chunks or raw ground turkey and my dogs were happy, healthy and quite beautiful.
ReplyDeleteIf you ever feel time restricted again, there's a cute natural dog food (and other things) store around kirkland called Paws Cafe. The woman who owns and runs the place makes all the dog food in house and freshly made, I believe daily. You can check out the web site at pawscafe.com
ReplyDeleteI love it Carol! Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteCynthia -- We think that Maxie is a mix of Whippet and Pit Bull, but we have no way of knowing because she was a rescue. She is as sweet as she appears in the picture, and knows how to restrain her Pit Bull jaws when handling humans.
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