Boogie's blog

Cooking for the Boogs

February 9, 2013 at 9:28 am 3 comments

I am still reading Monica Segal’s K-9 Kitchen. Most of the information about understanding nutritional values of food items, calculating allowances by the dog’s weight, and preparing custom spreadsheets has gone way over my head. I will need to return to earlier chapters and figure out these nitty gritties. There is also a chapter on how to read a blood panel and what all the values mean but my brain cannot cope right now after having just spent the past two days on taxes & assorted spreadsheets…

I want to cook for Boogie again. I used to feed Boogie a mix of homecooked and The Honest Kitchen but it was a lot of work so I switched to 100% freeze dried/dehydrated raw and add fish oil, probiotic and kelp supplements. I want to see if an expert-formulated homecooked diet makes any difference to Boogie’s energy level and skin condition (which is still not good… his coat is thinning).

There is a chapter of raw, cooked and combo recipes in the K-9 Kitchen Book and tonight, I made a big pot of food for a 25lb active dog.

I may have made a mistake with the quantities.  I later read that the ounces of veggies and meats in the recipe are for COOKED portions. I had weighed raw ingredients and cooked them all together. Oops. Next week we will do better. Boogie has not eaten grains in ages, but he used to do ok on oats (The Honest Kitchen: Keen) so we’ll see. The only complicated part was having to handle beef liver – which I had never touched before – and this was pretty gross. Slimy and bloody… worse than chicken liver, and it is stinky when cooked. I also hoped I used the correct amount of Calcium supplement… I stirred in some capsules as I don’t yet have the powdered version.

Look at Boogie. He wanted his big pot of dinner NOW. When the food was stored away in the fridge, he refused to leave the kitchen. In between games of fetch, Boogie kept running to the kitchen hoping that I would follow him and get the message. Each time I got up from my desk or couch, Boogie would dash to the kitchen and drop his ball at the door… “Please can I have some of that stinky meat sludge? Please?”

Entry filed under: Food.