Dog Food

You may be aware that we have three dogs.

Mittens, the sleek evil genius with half a tail, who vaguely resembles Vladimir Putin:

Okie, the lab/black and tan coonhound mix who is the single biggest baby on the planet and cries about everything and hates having his photo taken:

And Avery, the beagle/blue tick coonhound mix who has been with us a whopping two weeks, has an odd habit of barking at her butt, and is under the impression that she is a lap dog:

They are awesome and a lot of fun, but having this many puppers is also not cheap, especially in the food department!

The dog food that we could afford to buy ran us about $15 a month. We made a discovery about that food, though. It caused Mittens and Okie no end of issues. Mittens had a chronic ear infection, and Okie had a yeast infection rash on his belly. Both had dry, itchy skin. After doing some research and calling our vet about it, I learned that it was all stemming from the cheap ingredients their dog food contained. The kind of food the vet recommended is not cheap, but would keep them healthier.

I bought the vet recommended brand once. The dogs did eat it, but they didn’t seem to enjoy it at all. They preferred the cheap stuff. Plus, when I looked at the bag, it said it contained “a substance known in the state of California to cause cancer” (but not in other states, eh?), which is a problem for me. You mean to tell me that I was paying a fortune for food my dogs didn’t even like, and there’s some kind of cancer stuff in it, and the producer knows this? I mean, yeah, pretty much everything is a carcinogen, and cancer-causing things can’t be escaped entirely, but do we have to just accept it and move on? AND pay a fortune for the experience?

I don’t think so.

So, I started making our dog food myself. At a fraction of the price. And the dogs love it.

And if you are experiencing problems along the same lines as we were with store bought dog food, and you have a pressure cooker or a crock pot and a little bit of time, you, too can pamper your dogs and feel all hoity-toity like me.

We all know you want to feel hoity-toity like me. Here’s how.

Buy one of those big ol’ bags of chicken leg quarters, a big bag of sweet potatoes, brown rice, frozen mixed vegetables, and some eggs. I also add in kyolic garlic, but you don’t necessarily have to. I’m not gonna tell you how to live your life. Oh, and sometimes I’ll add in a can of pumpkin.

Cook up the big ol’ bag of chicken in the pressure cooker (or crock pot of you’re not in a rush), and then dump it all out on a cookie sheet to cool. Then dump the rest of the ingredients into the pressure cooker (or crock pot, if you’re still not in a rush) with an appropriate amount of water for however much you’re cooking. Cook it all up while the chicken cools. When the other stuff is done cooking, the chicken should be cool enough that you can take the bones out and smash the meat up into little bits, and then mix the rest of the stuff together with the chicken. Separate it out into serving sizes and store in the refrigerator or freezer.

Your dogs will love it, and if yours are anything like ours, their skin problems and ear infections will disappear, and their fur will be shiny and smooth like never before. They will sparkle and be suddenly able to do quantum physics and will get jobs and be endlessly grateful. *

* Ok, surely you know some of that stuff might not happen.

To brig this mess of a post to a close, here is a strange price tag we saw the other day at Aldi. Boneless, skinless leg meat? Has anybody ever heard of such a thing? Is this an actual thing you can buy? We couldn’t find it — there was only this little price tag hanging out by itself.