Day 23/homemade dog food & treats recipe

By Request: dog food and treats recipe: I have a local butcher who I have a 20 cents a pound deal with on his scraps. I had told him that after a LOT of research, I was interested in making my own dog food. Not only will my recipe for dog food benefit Dos, who of course has a lot of nutritional catching up to do, but the other four have their own needs. Francis, who is almost 14, has seizures, hot spots bad joints, and missing a lot if teeth will benefit from the softness and extra vitamins and proteins. Walter, who is 1 1/2, has joint problems due to being a large breed and, my vet speculates, some physical trauma before he made it to the shelter. He also has a very sensitive GI tract. Owen has allergies, and Ira just compulsively overexerts himself-so we have great candidates for a high-protein freshly made dog food. 

I came home this morning with  a lot of meat "byproducts" (fishbones, hearts, livers, meat scraps not pretty enough to sell-beef, chicken and fish) a bag of brown rice, a bag of carrots, a bag of frozen peas, potatoes and flax seeds. 

This is what I did, and I think it will be about enough to feed all five dogs dinner for a week.  

Boil the meat products. I had about three pounds of the various meats. The only bones in it were fishbones, that once cooked were soft enough to smash up.

I boiled everything until it was thoroughly cooked. I put the meat aside and used the water to cook the bag of rice. Throwing in the bag of carrots, cut into smaller pieces, the bag of peas, and four diced potatoes, I let it simmer until it was a big pot of mush and the water was almost nonexistent. 

I stirred the mush in with the meat and a half cup if flax seeds, and put it into a gallon bucket and put it in the fridge with a lid on. 

For a calcium supplement, I made "eggshell powder" by taking egg shells, boiling them just to make sure they were clean, and once dry, running them through a coffee grinder to make a powder. (And I used the eggs themselves to make the doggy treats).

I put the powder in a jar, and plan on giving them a half a tea spoon on top of their dinners. Dos, because of her previous breedings, will get a whole teaspoon with her dinner.

So! The doggy treats.. 

2cups rolled oats

3 eggs

1.5 c peanut butter 

1/2 cup plain fat free yogurt 

1 cup oat flour (I know that none of the dogs have a wheat allergy but this is what I had on hand. If your dog has a wheat allergy try oat flour instead)

Mixed it all up in a bowl, rolled it in tiny balls, and baked it at 350 for about 10 minutes. I think it made 30 treats.

I did try one......ugh. At least the dogs love them.

MY HOUSE SMELLED FUNKY during this whole process. Fish smell and peanut butter are a weird combination.

Dos was more interested in all of the kitchen smells than any of the other dogs. Her eyes got huge and she hopped a little each time she smelled a new smell. I gave her a piece of meat whole I was cooking and literally heard her gobble it. Like a piggy. I have never heard that much enthusiasm in my entire life.

This is the ravenous crazed pig-walrus look she gets in her eye when she knows it's little Dos' mealtime:)

And when I gave her the first cup of fresh dog food and one of the treats in her bowl, she ate so wholeheartedly that she pushed the bowl around the floor by licking it for 20 minutes after.

I think it was a success..

Dos was rearing to go for her walk tonight..another 10 minutes of sniffs.  I can't wait till she completes the heartworm treatment and we can go on little adventures..something tells me that she would really like to go play in some water or go camping..but she hasn't even started her treatment, so..all in due time..

Time is going by quickly..day 23! Are we really almost to a whole month? Wow.

Tomorrow, when I get to a real computer, I will post a super awesome special thing a collar company is doing for Dos. On my phone won't do it justice. 

Day 24, we are headed your way.