Allergies are a pretty common issue with dogs. People go through numerous diet changes, conflicting advice with the cost of food getting higher and higher as you try to provide your pet with something that won’t make them sick and of some quality. We were spending about 25 bucks for under 10 lbs of food and still getting no where for this poor thing we took in. Our dog came to us with various health problems that we were told all related to allergies. Different vets had different approaches to this. The conventional vets had all sorts of treatments for the symptoms and in whatever conflict of interest sold the “simple ingredient” dry food that was supposed to help. We got further along with alternative, Chinese medicine based vets that worked on his whole system to help him process all food better and suggested we switch to raw with a combination of herbs.
A dog with complicated diet needs doesn’t work well on a tight budget. We found our solution at the butcher counter of the grocery aisle. “A couple pounds of meat scraps please.”
At 86 cents a pound we spend about $12 a month and give this dog of ours exactly what he needs and wants…basically as close as his dinner comes to resembling the compost pile, the happier he is.
He gets different stuff every meal (we feed about a cup twice a day) depending on what we’ve been eating, because he gets the scraps from our veggies we are cooking as well. We throw in some cooked brown rice and fish oil usually as well as well as mixing with hot water.
No doubt that its a little labor intensive. But we don’t mind. It’s a few minutes all said and done and it’s good variety for our little friend.
To go a little more into the allergy issue- we’re approaching the issue in way that makes a lot of sense to me and doesn’t involve trying to become some kind of laboratory testing different combinations of food for six weeks at a time, not allowing the dog to eat anything else (if that’s even possible). Basically what we’ve come to understand is that the dog’s immune system is out of whack- responding too heavily to things that shouldn’t be a big deal (certain animal proteins or grains). His body was producing significant histamine responses and making him itch, leading to him constantly licking and biting his feet. In trying to deal with the issue I found very little help searching the internet.
We are still figuring out if this approach is going to help him get to a place where he doesn’t itch and doesn’t need to lick and bite. He’s certainly calming down, but isn’t all the way there. To help him, I made cotton booties with velcro for when he’s at home. This may sound silly- but let me say it’s much less intrusive than a previous vet’s prescription of the lampshade “e-collar” that sort of prevented him from licking but also from eating, drinking, walking around or seeing properly. If you have a dog in a similar situation let me know and I can post the pattern.
We feed him this homemade food because we know he’s getting the stuff a living thing needs and it’s cheaper for us. I like the idea of tapping into his scavenger instincts and giving him the scraps from our food- and nice to know all the cuttings from the butcher isn’t going to waste! (Note, the lazier the butcher the better as the scraps will have more meat to them).
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Hey, my friend Vena turned me on to your blog. It’s really great! I wanted to write to you about your dog. My dog back home had the same problem (To much histamine production, itching and licking of feet and “hot spots”) I put her on the same raw food diet, which made an immediate improvement. A friend of my sister also had a dog with the same problem and she turned me on to nutritional yeast sprinkled on the food as well as a calendula /olive oil rub on the hot spots. It’s a bit more daily work but worth it for sure. I’m really looking forward to all of your future post! Keep it up.
Update: We are now cooking these meat scraps. It does take a lot of energy to process raw food and for a while he just seemed to need extra energy to heal. We ended up doing a run of antibiotics that cured up his sore feet and now, in addition to simple homemade meals he occasionally gets Benadryl (actually “Waldryl”)when his allergies to unknown sources act up. We are now able to manage his reactions so they don’t get as bad as they did, and his diet is crucial to that. Pretty similar to what we have here, cooked scraps from the butcher, odds and ends of the veggies we eat, and a bit of dry food (Limited Ingredient Diet) to round it out. We will often try to add something raw or active like sauerkraut, yogurt, or raw milk (lucky dog eh!).
Very interested in your home made dog food. I have been making my dogs’ food for a while now. One of my questions is how to determine how much meat to add versus other ingredients. They want to pick out the meat and have become very sloppy eaters, scattering it all around their dishes. The older dog has diabetes insipidus so the protein factor is important. Anyway, was interested in your blog information.
Liz, we have started cooking up our dogs meat scraps and throwing the veggies into the mix on the stove. So we are no longer feeding raw, but it is still a slower and lower temp processing than commercial dry dog food. He also gets lots of raw bones. It takes a good deal of energy to burn raw food and as my dog is getting older he seems to need the energy he has for running around and healing from his various misadventures.
I can’t tell you ratios of ingredients based on any nutritional expertise. We do a lot of the food by trial and error, paying attention to how he reacts and how his digestion seems and whether or not he is losing or gaining weight (we don’t want him losing it in his case)
Your dogs might be eating around the meat because there is not enough good stuff on the veggies. Since we make ours into a stew there is really no avoiding it and we will put in other fat sources like fresh bacon fat and/or salmon oil. So that helps make all the parts delectable. Dogs are nothing if not intuitive so there must be a reason that they will eat certain things and not others even if they don’t match with our sense of things.
Hope that helps!
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