Home Cooked Dog Food

From: Tammy M.

Sent: June 30, 2012

To: undisclosed recipients

Subject: Fw: Home Cooked Dog Food

I always wanted to make my dog's home made dog food and this article is pretty good. Please share maybe someone else may want to also make their own as well. Tammy
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Home cooked dog food: Deciding to cook your own dog meals and use your own recipes is an important decision.

Now maybe you are wondering why?

Well here are a few good reasons:

Because home cooked dog food is not a balanced diet nutritionally, unless you know what you are doing.

It takes time to organize the right type of ingredients.

You have to freshly prepare food everyday unless you make everything in batches and freeze them.

Making sure the dog food is tasty enough and that your dog will like it.

You have to use tried and tested recipes that give you some sort of balance nutritionally.

You have to have some understanding of using the right combination of carbohydrates, fats and proteins.

You have to understand the different nutritional needs of different breeds.

About making sure that your dog is getting the right vitamin and mineral mix.

You have to know which foods are harmful to your dog and which are not.

You have to know which foods, if you feed too much of, can kill your dog.

These are just a few of the things you should know when deciding to feed and cook your own dog food and there are others.

Veterinary surgeons will often tell you that there is more trouble with dogs whose owners cook their own food simply because the dogs are lacking nutritionally and are more susceptible to disease.

Manufactured dog food is nutritionally balanced, as far as protein fats and carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals, however their ingredients can vary continually because of the changing cost of raw materials.

Many vets will try and persuade you to use the manufactured food in preference to home cooked simply because, they believe, there are less health problems and they often sell it themselves, which is a valid reason.

Like all foods, whether cooking and preparing for humans or animals, you have to be aware of the nutritional requirements of the end user or consumer. Professionally trained cooks or ones trained by other chefs have to know a great deal including the nutritional value of the food they are preparing. Most home cooked food may be wonderful to taste and look great, but it is not balanced nutritionally. This is just a fact and we are all guilty of this.

So why do we give our pets and animals manufactured food that is balanced and not get it right ourselves? We live far longer than our dogs, so as a consequence a dog ages more rapidly than we humans. Your pooch ages five to six times faster than you do so any problems with a nutritional deficiency shows up quicker in your dog than in you.

However despite the amount of effort it takes to cook your own dog food, I am a great advocate of home cooked dog food and I have fed this for many years without any problem.

Learn as much as you can before tackling the preparation of your own dog food. Making sure that home cooked food is safe for your pet and knowing all the pitfalls, as well as how to go about it, is easy if you do not rush the process.

Ian Nicholson is passionate about dogs and has been around them for over fifty years. If you are interested in keeping your dog healthy into old age then he invites you to visit him at http://www.choosebestdogbreed.com and get your free e-Book and also learn more about cooking and preparing your own dog food.

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