Saturday, January 05, 2008

Homemade Dogfood

Special thanks to CarolAnn who knows more about this than anyone else, and has instructed John, who is now the dog food chef extrodinairre.
Suggested ingredients
2 – 3 pounds ground beef or turkey (to be used raw)**
3 cups uncooked rice
3 cups shredded veggies* (eg carrots and broccoli)
good leftovers such as cheese, cornbread, multi grain bread, oatmeal
beef broth
eggs

Cook the rice and dump it into a huge bowl and let it cool. Lay a large piece of wax paper on the counter. Get out the zip lock bags and have them ready on another piece of wax paper. (You don’t want to be getting raw meat on anything else around the kitchen once you get started.
Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well with your bare hands. Use beef broth and/or eggs to make a sticky consistency. At this point, the dog can taste it, and let you know how you are doing.
Roll into balls (golf ball sized up to tennis ball sized, depending on the dog’s meal size) and arrange on the wax paper. Put 4 balls into each Ziploc bag and freeze. Thaw each bag in the fridge before using.

*dogs should NOT get onions, peppers, eggplant or tomatoes
**our vet said to cook the patties, because of the bad bacteria that can be found in ground meats. However, Carol Ann says dogs have enzymenes to protect them (makes sense, since they would eat raw meat in the wild). Because Cleo is so sick, I'm not taking any chances and I flatten it and fry it in a saucepan.