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Originally Posted by Jmulls  Thank you all for the warm welcome, and the links. We recently had a bad experience with a particular kibble Polo was eating. Having seen him look as dehydated as he was, i swore I'd take matters into my own hands.
So let me ask this, for those that are home cooking, are you happy ? So if I go the petdiets route and get a recipe along with the supplement, is this all Polo will eat? |
I have home cooked since Barney and Daisy were puppies and they are almost 11. They show little signs of aging despite bad breeding and I attribute that mostly to consistent veterinary care and keeping up with wellness visits but also to home cooking. I have been very happy with the results and I would not trade it for kibble. I have used kibble in conjunction with home cooking, but I mostly have done exclusively home cooked. When Teddy joined our family he went to home cooked food and some commercial puppy food. I have been both supported and admonished by veterinarians with my approach but I have been happy with it and it has been the right decision for me and my dogs.
There are challenges to home cooking and to do it right means you are consistent. In my kitchen that means - organic high quality food, sanitary kitchen conditions, proper storage, freezing at subzero and vacuum packaging, proper defrosting, fresh supplementation and fresh fish oils. It means an incremental gram scale where all food is weighed and portioned to perfection and supplements are not rounded, they are weighted to increments of grams. I know what I feed my dogs is 100% balanced properly as fed so that I can be rest assured knowing that what has been formulated for them is what they are getting when I feed it.
The downside to home cooking -
shopping
cost
time for preparation / storage
storage
lack of portability
The other problem with home cooking is that most people do not do it 100% in a militaristic type of way and they tend to "skip" things. This is not a good thing when home cooking for dogs.