Tips for Cooking for Your Pet

1.  Be organised

Home cooking for dogs can be expensive and time-consuming. A little key organisation can make life a whole lot easier. It’s not as simple as cooking a little of what you eat every day and providing an appropriate extra portion for your dog, because his nutrient requirements are not the same as yours. Furthermore, some ingredients that we often add to our meals are toxic to dogs (e.g. onions), some are simply best avoided (e.g. foods that can make dogs flatulent), and others we may prefer to keep off the menu due to health reasons (e.g. too much salt and artificial additives). Certain ingredients can only be fed in moderation (e.g. liver – due to its high vitamin A content). As with a raw diet, advance planning and preparation is required to ensure the correct balance of nutrients over a set time period. Also, a variety of meats are generally needed to provide them (unless you are feeding an exclusion diet with limited ingredients for medical reasons). Many owners who home-cook for their dogs find it easier to set aside a cooking day and prepare large batches of meals which are then refrigerated / frozen  in portions ready for use during the coming week. You may find you need more fridge / freezer space to do this, and again, as with raw feeders an allocated dog unit is a good investment. Apply the same common sense to storing and preparing your dog’s food as you would your own.

2.  Take care with the nutrient balance

Devising a home-cooked menu is complex because entities that are normally known with commercial food (the nutrient balance, the calorie content and subsequent feeding portions) are not provided for you and require calculation based on your dog’s life stage and activity level as well as general canine nutrient requirements and any special factors relevant to the individual. It is best to start off with a good book by a qualified and credible author; such as “The Natural Pet Food Cookbook” by Wendy Nan Rees with Kevin Schlanger DVM.  Lew Olson’s “Raw & Natural Nutrition for Dogs” mainly covers raw feeding, but there are also some examples of some-home cooked diets (including menus for some nutritionally responsive medical conditions). There’s plenty of advice that can be gleaned online too, but do check the author’s credentials as a poorly planned and prepared home-cooked menu can result in dietary deficiencies or excesses. Home cooked diets should generally contain 50-75% animal protein sources (such as meat, fish, egg, yogurt that also contain water and fat; so do bear in mind that these ingredients do not provide 75% pure protein!). The remaining 25-50% is made up from carbohydrate sources (suitable fruits and vegetables; which must be cooked or pureed to ensure digestibility). A calcium supplement will be necessary for long-term home-cooking (900mg calcium per pound of food). Ingredients should ideally be diverse (unless the reason for home-cooking is to provide an exclusion diet) to ensure that all of the essential amino acids and other important nutrients that a dog needs are supplied.

3.  Breaking yourself in gently

If you are cautious about getting the right balance, then why not start off by making some wholesome home-cooked dog treats and continue with a commercial diet whilst doing some more research? Another option (for adult dogs) is to add just a little healthy home-cooked food (such as lean white meat, fish or egg with some added rice or well-cooked mashed potato) and feed this alongside commercial wet or dry food. So long as the commercial food supplies at least two thirds of your dog’s daily calories, and you are not adding calcium-rich additions then this should not upset the nutrient balance of the commercial food (but do check with the manufacturer if you are not sure). As a broad guide (if the commercial dry food contains around 15% fat), you should reduce the amount of kibble by around 30g for every 100g of fresh food fed.