it’s time to make the dog food !!

Today was dog food making day. As everyone knows we make the food for the “littles” (the little dogs). With Agnus being a million years old and Denny being not quite 1 there is a wide range of ages between the five of them. We are always working with, talking about, attempting to fortify Chuck’s coat … something with the little ones. I found it’s better to just feed them what I know is going into the food.

 I have mentioned recipes for dogs before. This is what everyone just ate for dinner.

In a large pan I browned some cut up chicken (this was raw but if I have left over I use that), a little bit of left over ham (ham is really salty so I don’t use this very often and when I do it’s just a little bit) and fresh garlic in olive oil. Then I remembered we had some fat being saved for the birds’ suet so I took a tbls. of that. You want a certain amount of fat in the food. This is what makes the coats nice and shiny and this time of year they like to lay in front of the heat vents … it seriously dries them out. When the meat was just about done I chopped up an apple. Toss the apple in the pan, tossing it around to start it cooking. (This is a good time to add a chopped up carrot if you want).

Add a can of chicken stock. Watch for chicken stock to go on sale. Sometimes I use bouillon but when I do it’s just one cube. I don’t want the food really salty. (When we are feeling especially enthused we cook an entire chicken, bone it, chop it etc. etc., today was not that day). 

Someone asked about using beef the last time I put this on my blog. Beef is fine if your dog can tolerate it and a lot can’t. Sometimes I use ½ ground beef, with ground turkey. Pugs can be VERY gassy, it isn’t pretty. A lot of dogs are allergic to beef. Can you believe that?

So, after the meat, garlic and apple have cooked in the broth add a couple of cans of water. Today I added one can of sweet potato. Sometimes we use fresh sweet potato but I didn’t have any. This is also a good time to add some beets. Cool huh? A few tabls. of cooked pumpkin is a great thing to throw in as well. Pumpkin is wonderful for settling upset tummies in the canine kids. Now we have most of the ingredients cooking away.

This is when the “littles” start gathering in the kitchen. They know when dog food is being made!!

Finally, we throw in the two fish oil capsules. Let them dissolve and stir the whole deal up. Today we had a little bag of enriched pasta in the shape of the alphabet!! LOL .. How fun!! Use enriched rice if you have it, brown rice would be great. If we have left over rice from a dinner I throw that in as well. Bring it to a full boil, turn off the burner, put on the lid and leave it. The whole thing will continue to cook softening the noodles or rice and apples. Yummy ~~

You can put this into a food processor if you want it to look like dog food. With five of the little ones we don’t really do that step. This is so fun to do and is different every time. Sometimes I put in chopped fresh green beans, apple sauce, rice baby cereal, ½ of a squished up banana. This is a great time to clean out the fridge!

There is a down side; we give the newly cooked food to the little ones while it’s warm. They want warm food now! LOL ..!! That’s okay, add a bit of hot water before feeding and voila’, warm food.

All of our dogs have wonderful coats!! I love it when some one says, I LOVE the shine on your dogs what do you feed them?

 Well …..

~ by simplycara on February 9, 2009.