Cooking for your dog could be enjoyable as cooking for your friends and family, but there are some things that we need to remember. Our home-made recipes that we are preparing for our furry-friends should not contain pork, grapes or chocolate. And if we do not want to become slaves in the kitchen, the best thing that we could do is to prepare a bigger quantity and then – just freeze it.
One of the benefits to have a dog as a pet in 21st century is the fact that we have amazingly large choice of dog food and dog treats. But, what we might not know is that the factory made dog food may contain various toxic chemicals that could cause health issues to our dog. If you read the declaration and the content on any of this dog food containers, you will see that the main ingredients are – intestines and meat.
Let’s be honest, this food will not cause health issues to your dog on short-time basis, but it is not the most healthiest diet as well. There are many dog food manufacturers and they are not the same quality, of course and with little research we may find the one that is the most suitable for our dog.
As we said, it will be OK for short-basis diet but, you must admit that there is not a dog food that good that will provide our dog with all the necessary vitamins and proteins that he need. So, let’s just stick to the home-made diet for dogs.
Raw or Cooked?
When you are preparing food for your dog at home, it is very important to combine all the right ingredients so, the meal will contain as much as vitamins and proteins as possible. The easiest way is if you could combine 70% meat and 30% fiber in one meal. Choosing the right meat for the dog meal also depends on the dog’s age or health condition.
If you have older dog, then the best meat for his meal is chicken, turkey or fish. There are still some discussions going on about the preparation method. Some people think that cooked food is dangerous for dogs, because it may contain bacteria while the other side said that the dogs had evolved up to that level that, they will digest cooked food much easier than raw.
When you are preparing a meal for your dog, it always require time and money. If you are going to buy a juicy steak for your dog on daily bases, most probably you will eat breadcrumbs at the end of the month.
Buying premium quality meat is not always a good solution, especially if you are having more than one dog. We are going to provide you with few advices how to reduce the cost for the ingredients. The most common and easiest thing that you could do, in order to reduce the cost is to use the left-over food from your lunch so you prepare a delicious meal for your dog.
If you had chicken or beef for lunch, just remove the skin and the grease from it and add other ingredients in order to prepare a nice meal for your dog. You may also ask for discounted meat or fish. Many local butcher shops have discounts on weekly basis, so make sure to always use the advantage of buying cheaper.
If you are a regular customer at some meat shop, ask the butcher to give you the leftover pieces of meat and usually they will give it to you for free, if they cannot use it for anything. You may prepare new recipe for your dog twice a week, and it doesn’t sound much, but once when you count that is 52 different meals per year.
If you are busy person and you do not have the time to cook for your dog, do a research and find the premium quality dog food. It would be more expensive than the ordinary food, but you can purchase it on discount or in bigger container.
