Churchill doing great on Homemade Pet Food

I appreciate the responses I received on homemade pet food. Churchill is like a different dog since I took him off of the store brands. Basically I give him the four food groups and a vitamin suppliment. Not only is he sleeping through the night, but not one accident in the house or otherwise. He is a beautiful dog and I love him sooo much. Rupert's Recipe book is a great book and great organization to donate for dogs with SM. See ya.:lotsaluv:

Delighted to hear that the Rupert's Fund recipe book has made so much difference to Churchill's life, Karen.

Nicki will be so pleased to hear this too i*no:

I haven't seen any of these recipes so I have no idea of the ingredients. But...there is one very important aspect of home cooking long term for dogs and that is that calcium and phosphorus MUST be balanced. If there is not enough calcium in the dog's food, his body will leach calcium from his bones and there can be disastrous results.

I am not at all a diet expert, but I am a moderator on a canine kidney diet yahoo list (mainly there to consult for dogs with kidney failure and concurrent heart failure which is a tricky balancing act). This list teaches owners how to home cook for dogs with chronic kidney disease. Owners use nutritiondata.com to analyze ingredients and calcium carbonate is added to the home cooked diet after calculating the amount of phosphorus in the diet. There is not enough calcium in a multivitamin to achieve this goal. There is far more phosphorus in foods than calcium, which is why calcium must be added for a proper balance. Dr. Donald Strombeck's original book (not the updated version by another author which has some major errors including confusing baking soda and calcium carbonate) has been the basis for the guidelines in home prepared diets in this and other home cooking groups.

Pat

What is the Rupert's Recipe book and where can you buy it? I would love to have a look. I will continue to feed Brooklyn her kibble while she is so young, but would love a good recipe here and there. I am also going to change her kibble soon though, to something more whole as I think that could be leading to some of her skin issues.

Thanks!

I have just changed my kibble from Pro Plan to Innova. I have been told it is great. Someone I know, her Cav was always scratching, her vet told her to put them on Innova. She did and hasn't had a problem since. It's more expensive but will be worth it in the end. I only had a small amount so I have just mixed it in. No problems so far. They don't have much kibble anyway as I feed a raw diet.

Rupert's Recipe book is on this forum. On the right of the forum it shows Ruperts Fund here is the link [email protected]. I think this will work I hope. Anyway I recieved an email concerning calcium so I am concerned about that, but I just know that churchill is a better dog. If the link doesn't work go to Ruperts Fund and do a search you should find the recipe book. It is a little elaborate but good insight. Good luck. Let me know if there is anything else I can do.

I was watching a show the other day with a Canadian Pet Food nutritionist who has written her own book with home cooked recipes (which I don't yet have) and markets her own brand of supplement. She said one thing that really struck me.

When switching dogs from kibble to home cooked or raw you will often see major improvements in many areas including coat, eyes, etc. This is because the ingredients used are superior. What you don't see for a long time is the effect of an unbalanced diet (if that's what you have). That made a lot of sense to me and it's one of the reasons I still feed a diet of part kibble. I've done a fair bit of research and I'm still not confident I can balance a diet effectively (even though in theory I have all the tools to do so). I have a couple of animal nutritionist friends and I suppose I'm guided by them as well. My goal is to eventually be totally off of kibble but not until I can balance their diet 100%. My Rylie can't eat beef so I suppose it's a bit trickier because that's an easily available protein with a lot of what he needs.