May 23, 2011
What would be a good home cooked diet to feed my dog? Are table scraps enough?
Full Question:
Hello Cindy,My name is Jorge and I just found leerburg.com a few days back and I agree 100% with all I've read so far, Ed Frawley is a very wise man and he should continue to guide pet owners and dog trainers, he does a great job. It's been 8 years since Duke died (the greatest black lab that ever lived in opinion), and I am thinking of getting another dog (a german short hair pointer), and since I live in Brazil it makes it difficult to import your dehydrated food, and people food is easy and cheap to get, this country being the world's largest exporter of beef and chicken, that makes it easy ( here 1 kilogram of ground meat costs me US$0.90 also 1 kilogram of chicken breast costs me US$0.80 and that's over 2 lbs of real good quality meat for just under a dollar), and other foods are cheap too, and people pay a lot of money to feed their dogs (i.e. 50 lbs bag of pedigree dry dog food or another name brand cost 3x the price of 50 lbs bag of rice, there are cheaper brands, but lbs per lbs dog food still costs more). I know that I cannot just feed meat to this dog. So here is my question , what would be a good balanced diet of home cooked food for that dog? Would table scraps be good enough (we eat many kinds of beans) and how do dogs reacts to beans? And if that dog has puppies and if she isn't able to feed her young properly, would the bottle feeding that I saw in your web site work for this breed? On the FORCE dehydrated food, if I substituted the ingredients for fresh cooked would that work for me?
Thanks for your time and advice,
Jorge
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![Cindy](https://leerburg.com/Photos/articles/authors/cindyrhodes.jpg)
Thanks for writing.
I would suggest a couple of books for you to read Raw Dog Food and Natural Nutrition for Dogs and Cats. Both of these books are given to our puppy customers so they understand how to put together a proper diet for their dogs.
Beans would not be something I would feed to a dog on a regular basis. Dogs are made to eat meat and bones, that is the natural food for them.
I would feed a raw diet, since meat is easy to get in your country and raw meat and bones are the healthiest food for dogs. If you read these two books I recommend you will see that it's not hard to do and your dog will be much happier and healthier. I would not cook for my dogs, raw is better (and easier too). :)
The Honest Kitchen food is excellent, if you can get it in your country. It has everything the dog needs already there although you can add some extra meat if you wish.
Our formula recipe is for all breeds of dogs, it works very well. Every day Ed gets emails from people who have successfully raised a litter of puppies using this formula.
Hope this helps,
Cindy
I would suggest a couple of books for you to read Raw Dog Food and Natural Nutrition for Dogs and Cats. Both of these books are given to our puppy customers so they understand how to put together a proper diet for their dogs.
Beans would not be something I would feed to a dog on a regular basis. Dogs are made to eat meat and bones, that is the natural food for them.
I would feed a raw diet, since meat is easy to get in your country and raw meat and bones are the healthiest food for dogs. If you read these two books I recommend you will see that it's not hard to do and your dog will be much happier and healthier. I would not cook for my dogs, raw is better (and easier too). :)
The Honest Kitchen food is excellent, if you can get it in your country. It has everything the dog needs already there although you can add some extra meat if you wish.
Our formula recipe is for all breeds of dogs, it works very well. Every day Ed gets emails from people who have successfully raised a litter of puppies using this formula.
Hope this helps,
Cindy
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