A More Ethical Alternative: Homemade Dog Food

Exploring the ethics of pet food, and offering a recipe for a sustainable alternative to feed your beloved furry companions.

A More Ethical Alternative: Homemade Dog Food
Oso is our current working dog, as a rescue, he's not the best at all his jobs, but he does occasionally protect the chickens from other birds... with close supervision. He's also a working watchdog, and he lives outside with access to indoors, but at night he's out in the cold patrolling against coyotes and some of the opportunistic passers-by we get out here. As an integral part of our system, his nutrition and happiness are vital.

I've been making our own dog food for years, in part because our first rescue refused to eat industrially produced meat (ironic for a dog that came out of the shelter shockingly thin, but it's true). However, I never really considered offering "dog food production" as a service, nor that others may be interested in the synthesis of the research I've done on the topic until recently.

As with all things, though, I do not wish to be a hokey blogger who offers a few heavily keyworded thoughts on a topic and a "jump to recipe" button. There is a recipe, or the basis for a dog food recipe you can make at home, at the end of this post. However, I hope that you'll stick with me as we discuss some of the nutritional considerations necessary to bear in mind when producing food for your own companion.

Our beloved Diego disappeared this past July, and we miss him dearly. When he came to us he was horribly thin, but regained his muscle mass and total bounding joy very quickly once he had access to land to run and good food.

Food and Instinctive Behaviors

For most animals, the majority of their days are spent finding and consuming food. Dogs are no exception: in the wild, they will sleep a lot, yes, groom each other, play, mate, teach their young, and eat. The process of eating involves many other behaviors we know they love to engage in: sniffing around, exploring their environment, determining the relative relationship of all of the things they smell and see and feel. When we keep a dog in a house with limited outdoor time and feed them kibble (or homogeneous processed "wet food"), we are ultimately robbing them of a large part of this experience.

Now, it would be largely impractical in almost all cases to allow our dogs to actually "hunt" for their food, and most of them would be bad at it, anyway. Most of our working breeds were bred to retain some of the steps of instinctive hunting behaviors, but lose others. Birding dogs, for instance, like cocker spaniels, are meant to rush and chase birds out of a thicket or bush for a hunter to shoot. So they've retained the "seek prey" and "chase" steps of hunting, but nothing after. Retrievers have been bred to chase and retrieve, but not dissect or actually sink their teeth into the birds they retrieve. Livestock guardians don't have a prey drive, but will kill or injure threats to the animals they guard, so they've retained the "kill" and potentially "dissect" steps but not "seek prey" or "chase", as those steps would make them bad livestock guardians. Companion breeds are often variable as to what steps of their hunting pattern they have, but the point is that they are unlikely to be effective at killing and then actually consuming something for their food (I've witnessed our pit-rhodesian mix kill an oversized kangaroo rat that had gotten too large to be fast and then just stare at me wondering what to do next). They do rely on us to provide food, this is part of their domestication.

However, chewing, smelling, pulling apart, engaging with different textures and types of foodstuffs, this is all necessary for a dog to do. If you consider that most dogs on farms or in castles or villages would have been tossed table scraps, butchering offal and extras, or the leftovers from a hunt, it makes sense that a dog would have a certain proclivity towards deciding what should be eaten, which is foul, which is contrary to its health (i.e: a dog won't eat too much cabbage unless it's being provided as an excessive portion of what it has access to), and which it simply prefers. And of course, there is the expectation of chewing real food.

So we should feed dogs in a way where they can engage their noses, their mouths, and their bodies. We should feed them a diverse array of foodstuffs, both for mental stimulation and in order to maximize the amount of vitamins and minerals they obtain through diet without supplementation, and we should ensure that they're eating the foods that they should be eating: vegetables, fruits, meat[1], offal, and so on. What else? If we think about wild dogs, be they jackals, foxes or wolves, what other aspects of eating would they engage in?

Foraging, definitely. This cannot really be included in a recipe for dog food, because it will occur outside of your kitchen. Not only is it fun for dogs to sniff things and sometimes taste them, I've noticed that dogs supplement their own diet when given the chance: sometimes grazing a bit on grasses, sometimes chomping the fallen mesquite pods from our trees, sometimes opportunistically snatching something from the garden. This is important for two reasons: one, I think they supplement vitamins or minerals that are lacking, and I think they aid their own health and digestion by eating plants which have certain properties which may seem esoteric to us (or to me, at least, as I'm far from a botanist) but which they seem to have an innate awareness of or ability to discover. This can be supplemented if you have little space by walks in novel areas that are wild enough to have a variety of vegetation trailside, or off-leash time at a park (hopefully not one that sprays herbicides on its grass, though here in California that's pretty impossible to find). Potentially keeping a variety of potted plants within their reach could help as well, though this is an idea only and not something I've tried or seen tried.

Second, bones are critical. Dogs actually eat bones, at least those which are small enough to break down and swallow. Not only is this a stimulating activity, but it's critical to good dental hygiene. Wild dogs and the human companions of old didn't get their teeth brushed or cleaned by a vet: they didn't need to. Synthetic "dental" chews and dog toothpaste are ridiculous modern inventions which, like many products, aim to get you buying more without legitimate concern for your dog's well being. We give our dog a variety of things to chew on: chicken feet after slaughtering, neck bones which are easy to fully consume, knuckle or marrow bones which are full of their own goodness but last months or more of chewing as needed, and our dog always picks up feathers that blow from the chicken coop or turkey aviary and chew them as well. While feathers probably don't have quite the same value as bones, they do contain keratin and I'm sure he has a reason for eating them beyond simulating eating the turkeys themselves (which he would love to do, no doubt). Bones additionally provide supplemental calcium and other minerals, which in lieu of your dog also getting dairy wastes or supplemented dog food is critical to their health. Rawhide chews are wonderful stimulation, but aren't a total alternative to bones as they don't contain the same nutrients (and often once processed and sterilized commercially contain very little nutrition at all).

I do tend to avoid giving cooked bones in general, and chicken bones whether cooked or raw, though I have most definitely failed before at keeping Oso out of the compost heap as it's being dug and filled, inadvertently allowing him to make off with a twice-cooked (roasted and boiled for stock) chicken carcass with no ill effects. I'm sure there is some truth to the possibility of cooked chicken bones failing to splinter properly when chewed and causing bowel impaction or worse, but we've been lucky so far. Despite our luck, though, I try not to test it, as the general consensus seems to be that the risk is higher than for most other bones.

Ethical Homemade Dog Food: Getting into Nutrition

We've covered a lot, and have built a bit of context around understanding why it might be worth our while to make our own dog food from the lens of our dogs' wellness. We will touch also on ingredient sustainability a little bit as we get into what ingredients we should (and should not) include in our dog's food to ensure maximum nutrition and also the enabling of instinctive dog behaviors. I'll break it down by macronutrients broadly, and then have a small discussion about micronutrients, but it's important to consider that nutrition is cumulative in a normal diet. Some things must be present always (protein, for instance, for our primarily carnivorous omnivorous friends, and carbohydrates) and some things can be dispersed over time: the vitamins that may lack a bit when vegetables are scarcer in the winter will be made up for in the spring. So long as diversity is a consistent part of your dog diet plan, it is likely that you will find your dog remaining perfectly healthy and getting all that they need. You will usually notice changes if you take the time to pay attention to them that will show you whether the diet is helping or hurting: their coat should get shinier, without dandruff and feel appropriately textured without excess oil or excessive shedding out of season[3]; their energy level should be the same (or increase, we've seen our dogs' increase their stamina and energy with a raw food diet compared to kibble); their stool should look normal, and not be overly loose or cause them duress when passing; and their behavior around mealtimes should remain the same, without increased aggression, begging, and so on.

With all of that being said, I've read and heard that some dogs simply don't do well on a raw food diet. While this is what we do for our dogs, and it works quite well, it's definitely possible that some breeds lack the digestive capacity to thrive on such a diet, or that there is something else that causes them to have issues. If you choose to take the leap to a more ethical diet for your pets, please ensure you can source ingredients well, and that you'll commit to ensuring that you vary their food items and don't cut corners when it comes to preparation. And finally, I have to say: I cannot advise you to adopt such a diet. You are ultimately responsible for your own pets' health, and for obtaining veterinary care when necessary. It might be a good idea to check in with their vet before making such a switch and seeing if they have any advice for gradually shifting their diet, or any advice for monitoring them once you do so.

Finally, I've spent a lot of time drafting this article and truthfully, giving in-depth nutritional information including significant background into why certain nutrients should be present in certain amounts and digging into the nuance of different ingredients and their relative digestibility and quality greatly exceeded the scope of this document. I've saved a good bit of this information back to make this article readable (albeit still long) and will consider how to break it up for future releases. What I have included is a very broad, high level overview of macronutrient percentages (which could be found elsewhere online, I've linked a source in the first section) and then discussed possibilities for sourcing ingredients more sustainably and followed all of this up with a sample recipe based on our own dog's diet.

Cooked vs. Raw

I would be remiss to not mention something of this argument here. Some dog food brands sell you keywords like "evolutionary", "wild", "raw", and then some people say that raw food diets are bad for dogs and that everything (including meat) should be cooked. What's the truth?

As far as I can tell based on my research and experience, both are true. There are benefits to cooking fibrous or otherwise difficult-to-digest foods: squash, pumpkin, legumes, potatoes[4], some greens, and so on. Chewability is increased and choking risk is decreased, which is mostly important for dogs bred to have a squashed face or very small jaw, but which can be important for all dogs.

Some folks claim even meat must be cooked, and I could see some benefit in doing so: protein content goes up per ounce because water is lost but protein is retained, so potentially if you're trying to avoid mis-calculating your dog's nutrients that would be a benefit, or if your meat source has any potential for transmitting disease (i.e: if you go the route of obtaining the expiry stuff from a local grocer, for instance) it would be wise to cook it. Some dogs are picky: our first rescue would eat liver raw at first, but later would only eat it if it was cooked, and our other dog devours anything that once was breathing without any hesitation. Like most things, if you notice something seems to be causing your dog issues, change it.

I have fed some vegetables that might be better cooked raw without ill effects, though my guess is that I may have just been wasting money if half the zuchinni gets pooed out or whatever, so that's a consideration, too.

Protein

Protein should make up a good portion of your dog's food every day. The minimum is typically cited as being around 18% dry matter per day for an adult dog, and 22.5% for a growing dog or puppy. The maximum is cited in this source as 30%, and it's generally stated for all animals that excess protein does little for a diet, though it can in theory cause liver problems over time – a potential culprit for liver issues that arise with some raw food diets for dogs, though vets seem a bit split on this as dogs can excrete the excess better than some mammals (rabbits, for instance). This assumes that you are feeding out food items that are complete proteins – proteins that contain all essential amino acids, which are amino acids the body cannot synthesize itself. Meat is complete protein, while some combinations of vegetables (the three sisters combination of corn, beans and squash when together are an example) form a complete protein, though their digestibility for dogs is lower.

To calculate this, you would take the weight (dry matter just means food weight) of your dog's daily food need and calculate what 18% would be in grams or ounces. Then you would figure out what ingredients you would like to use to fulfill this need. If you use some plant protein in addition to meat, it might be recommended to consider cooking or otherwise processing the plant ingredients so that they are more digestible, and then to also increase the overall weight of protein ingredients in the portion. It would be important to not just increase the amount of the plant ingredient you wish to use as a protein, but to add another ingredient that would help ensure all of the essential amino acids are provided.

To find how much protein ingredient(s) to add to your dog's daily ration (usually cut in half and fed out twice a day) you would calculate the protein ration by researching what % protein by weight that ingredient usually is. For example, rabbit tends to be on the higher side around 27% protein by weight, and turkey can be from 20-25% depending on the cut. However you research this, make sure you know whether the numbers you find are for cooked or raw ingredient. For instance, turkey is usually cited as being about 25% protein for cooked turkey breast. Because meat loses water weight when it's cooked, this is important, because if you calculate 25% protein based off of the raw weight you'll calculate a little wrong. It might be wise, if you can only find a range for a certain ingredient to assume the lower end of the range. As long as you aren't already aiming for 30% protein, a little more than what you're planning for will be fine unless otherwise specified by your vet.

I have notes about converting from calories and grams of protein per caloric serving down with the recipe, as this is a necessary place to start (though I've found you'll almost always end up converting to grams and using weight anyway as this is how most serving sizes for different ingredients are usually represented) to make sure the weight portion you're feeding your dog isn't entirely arbitrary.

Sourcing meat ethically is one of the biggest upsides to making your own dog food. Supposedly "sustainable" pre-made dog food is extremely expensive, and often not available in local pet stores (unless you live in West LA or something), meaning it often requires expensive subscriptions and being shipped across country. When we started making our own dog food, we went to the stall of the farm we now source all of our meat from and discussed with the farm owner's wife that we wished to purchase several pounds of meat every week, and would it be possible to procure a discount if we can commit to that amount. She liked what we were doing, and told us that she would give us a discount and then also collect all of the "damaged packs" of meat that occasionally are improperly vacuum sealed at the USDA plant their meat is processed at and which they typically cannot sell and sell it to us for a significant discount. Eventually we worked out a deal with the owner of the farm to purchase their cull boars in bulk at an extremely discounted per-pound price. While such relationship building takes time, it is certainly worth considering, as it's possible you could procure high quality, ethically raised animal products for the cost of the industrially produced alternative in the grocery store. It may be possible also to simply discuss with your local grocery store that you wish to use meat that is past it's label date for dog food, not your own consumption, and see if they're willing to give it to you for free or a significant discount. Most big box grocers cannot do this for liability reasons, but if you still are lucky enough to have a family-run grocery store around it's worth asking. Though you would not be sourcing pasture-raised or high-welfare animal products, you would be reducing waste while not increasing demand.

Producing your own meat is likely the most ethical and cost-effective way to source it for your own consumption or that of your pets, though this is not possible for everyone and we understand this. However, perhaps you have a homesteader in your own community who would be happy to share their products with you for processing assistance or a small buy-in to the feeding of the animal, or who has excess offal (lungs, liver, hearts, stomachs, etc.) they don't wish to use and are willing to give away.

Fats

Fats should not make up a significant portion of your dog's food, only about 5.5%. These should come from diverse sources, and include a variety of fatty acids.

Depending on your meat source, a good amount of this may come from your meat. Some weeks my dog eats heritage turkey, for instance, and some weeks my dog eats cull boar from our favorite organic farm (Sage Mountain Farm) which is extremely fatty.

If you're feeding your dog on the leaner side (rabbit, turkey, fish), calculate the fat % of the meat and use the same process as calculating the protein to see if there's any need for supplementation. If you're feeding your dog ground beef that's marketed as being 85% lean and 15% fat, you can use the same approximate calculation, and if you're feeding out pork or something else fatty, look up the approximate fat content for similar pork (i.e: pasture raised or store-bought, because these will have wildly different values) and calculate.

If you do need to supplement, it would be best to add a variety of fats (again, this doesn't need to be in one week's worth of food, just spread out across weeks as ingredients are available or as other things are lacking). Some ideas:

  • Fish oil and flaxseed oil both contain Omega-3s
  • Sunflower oil contains Omega-6s (don't overindex on such chemically extruded oils or excessive Omega-6s, but some Omega-6 supplementation may help dogs with skin issues)
  • Safflower oil contains high amounts of Vitamin E
  • Avocados are excellent and healthy for dogs - don't feed the pit or skin
  • Peanut butter in moderation - make sure it contains no added sugar, and best if it doesn't contain added oils, and definitely avoid peanut butter with xylitol or other artificial ingredients. Natural peanut butter should just be peanuts, and that's best for your dog. They love it just the same, I promise!
  • Whole eggs, pastured is best (egg yolks also contain other vital vitamins and minerals that are beneficial for your dog's diet), I hardboil or scramble eggs that I find broken (not the membrane, just the shell) in the coop immediately and serve them to my dog but you could also just add hardboiled or scrambled (or raw, if you make very small batches of dog food) to their weekly food mix

Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates can make up between 30-60% of your dog's food. This sounds like a lot, but consider that wild dogs would be on a kind of fat/lean feeding schedule: lots of protein all at once when successful hunting, and lots of foraged greens/bulbs/seeds/etc in between hunting. Our local coyotes are frequently leaving very... woody scat around, indicating that they're spending much of their time trying to meet their nutrient needs by chewing on the branches of woody scrub.

Our pets don't need to spend all day meeting their caloric needs, but they do still need quick sources of energy and calorie storage. We don't aim to recreate the fat/lean schedule of wild dogs (though if you lived in a time of great scarcity your dogs would probably live in this framework as well) because we don't have to and because we perhaps need them to perform some activity.

We use a variety of grains to meet our dog's carbohydrate needs, and we either mix these or switch them out week to week, depending on what we have in bulk storage and what's available seasonally:

  • Brown rice
  • Quinoa
  • Couscous
  • Cooked wheat berries
  • Cooked oats

You could also use:

  • Corn or corn meal
  • Wheat bran
  • Spelt, millet, or other grains

Ensure that whatever you use, you research first, and be sure to consider digestibility first and foremost. Some things are a little more commonly used by vet nutritionists (i.e: brown rice) and easier to find information on, and some things, spelt, for instance, are probably harder to research.

In general, assume that your dog can probably not efficiently digest uncooked whole grains and that you should cook them. If you use corn meal, you can make it into a porridge, though if it's ground it may be digestible enough. Oats are starchy and high in sugar, so we use them sparingly, and wheat berries seem to have mixed information about their safety, so they should be boiled until soft like rice, strained, and used as a portion of the carbohydrate and not probably the entirety.

We use brown rice and stay away from white rice because brown rice is a whole grain. White rice is kind of like empty calorie filler, and though we see vets recommend it for bland food diets, and we're sure they have their reasons, it doesn't feel necessary for our canine.

Most of these grains do have some protein content, especially brown rice, wheat berries, and wheat bran. Look up the protein content and calculate that as a portion of your dog's protein. It may be insignificant, but especially if you're already feeding at the high end of protein or if your vet has recommended a lower protein diet due to liver issues, it might be very important to ensure you're not exceeding that recommendation.

Finally, the ability to source regeneratively or organically grown grains, or waste grains is an excellent boost to the sustainability of your dog's food.

Everything else: on vitamins, minerals, and veg

Your dog needs a plethora of both fat soluble and water soluble vitamins as well as minerals in minute to moderate amounts. Most of these will come as a result of a diverse diet, and we get most of these in our dog's food on a somewhat rotating basis by adding seasonal vegetables. It would be too lengthy to go into detail on all of the micronutrients here, but the first source linked under Note number 6 below has a table that breaks down some of these. I feel no need to plagiarize or include it here, but I do recommend checking it out.

Nutrition is cumulative: I said that already, but I'll say it again. We humans get all of our micronutrients (hopefully) through a varied diet that shifts with the seasons. Lots of us out there are either food insecure or without access to fresh and varied produce, or are terribly picky eaters, and so lots of us are probably deficient in one or another micronutrient. Your dog ultimately doesn't get to make choices, so if you have the access to fresh produce, you should be intentional about rotating their veg and giving them access to the outdoors where they can forage (and if you don't have this access that's maybe something to solve before making your own dog food, unfortunately).

Most vegetables are okay for dogs to eat in moderation, some more strictly monitored than others. Generally it's recommended to stay away from vegetables in the nightshade family, but bell peppers and eggplant both contain loads of vitamins and in moderation both are okay. Sweet potato and pumpkin are popular choices for homemade dog food, and both contain a plethora of good micronutrients, but always ensure you serve them cooked and make sure they don't become the only constant in your dog's food. Brocolli is excellent, as are carrots, I serve both raw though cooking may make them slightly more digestible. Brussels sprouts and cabbages can cause gas, but are okay in very small amounts to include additional vitamins.

Many necessary minerals are present in organ meats, and I very much recommend ensuring your canine friend gets some liver once in a while, but avoid feeding far too much. There is apparently such a thing as Vitamin E toxicity that can result from feeding too much fish or liver, though I have no idea how much you'd have to feed your dog to get to that point. Err on the side of general moderation and dietary diversity and hopefully none of us ever find out! As stated above, eggs and egg yolks are also great sources of both good fats and fat-soluble vitamins.

When our first rescue began to stop eating things from the store (including a very expensive frozen raw food), we started him off on sweeter vegetables to get him more used to eating them. This included carrots and sweet potatoes, and sometimes apples. Over time, he would eat more and more, and he ended up with a very diverse diet.

One note: our dogs won't eat huge chunks of vegetables. If you're feeding meat that is chopped and not ground, make sure you cut the vegetables (whether cooked or raw) up smaller than the meat chunks and mix them in well. If you're feeding ground meat, chop the vegetables up small and mix them in well. Your dog might be different: I had a dog growing up who blew through an electric fence to steal the neighbor's zuchinni more than once, but you also might find your dog refuses to eat any vegetables and carefully picks them out of the bowl. While generally I like to listen to what my dog is telling me (i.e: "I don't like brussels sprouts, they hurt my stomach") if your dog won't eat the things they need to eat to have a balanced diet I would either adjust accordingly or talk to your vet about options.

Sample Recipe

I'm going to create a sample recipe, using my dog as an example.

I have an 85 pound rescue mutt of unknown age who is almost certainly not a puppy. His caloric needs are estimated at 1150 per day, and I break that up into two servings. This breaks down into two 13.5 ounce servings, approximately, with the following allotments per serving:

  • Approximately 2.5 ounces of protein, calculated based on the % protein in whatever meat he's getting
  • Approximately 7.25 ounces of carbohydrates
  • Approximately .75 ounces of fats
  • The rest is filled with mixed vegetables, peanut butter, eggs, or organ meats, with protein adjusted for the latter

This, when preparing a weekly batch, looks a bit like:

  • 7 pounds of raw meat, we'll say turkey for this example
  • .5 pounds organ meats
  • 6 pounds of cooked brown rice
  • 2 avocados
  • around 3 pounds of raw vegetables, which, once cooked will weigh more but much of this extra weight is water weight added from cooking and is irrelevant to caloric inputs

This is not random, but initially will be painstakingly calculated by calculating his caloric needs, the calories per serving of meat, the protein per serving of meat (represented as a percentage of those calories), the calories per serving of eggs, vegetables, organ meats, and a consideration of the nutritional value of each, and so on. Once I have a general recipe down, I convert things to weight because it's easier week by week to calculate by weight, and I do this with the understanding that the calories are probably not being perfectly represented. However, given that my dog is not a puppy, and that I am paying close attention to his weight and other signs, this is fairly similar to how we put together our own diets, though we probably do much less counting for ourselves unless we're athletes or on some other strict diet regime.

It is important that you do not read this and then go recreate this recipe for your dog, but that you do the work to figure out what your dog's caloric needs are based on their size, age, and activity level, and use this as a rough guide to figure out what your dog's ideal diet would be.

Further Considerations

I didn't really think that front-loading this article even more with contextual information would be positive, but I did feel like potentially as you read questions may pop up. Here are some initial answers if you're finding yourself with questions. These are based on experience and interacting with other people and considering the world we live in.

Why make your own food if there's a risk of nutritional deficiency or health issues?

This is a good question, and one I found myself considering quite a bit as I wrote this article. I know why we make our own food, but why would you want to? It's time consuming, potentially more expensive, and yes, there's a risk I suppose.

The short answer for some is that they don't have a choice. An article in "Backwoods Living" magazine from the 90's written by an Alaskan shares how in Alaska, you can't afford dog food from a store, but most Alaskans outside of urban areas really do need a sled dog team to get around unless you can afford a snowmobile (which, in the age of awareness about fossil fuels sounds like a worse choice, not a better one). For others, those of us seeking to produce our own food, perhaps, gaining the knowledge of how to meet our dogs needs with things (meat, vegetables, grains) we can produce ourselves is a huge step towards decoupling with global food systems. Finally, it's just good to know how even if you don't do it now. In some future pandemic or other supply chain shortage, assuming you can get your own grocery staples, you may be able to keep your companion or protection dog fed as well.

But what about the risk?

I want to kind of pose this question in the above question and again, because my guess is that this is where your head is at. I've talked to a few people recently with dogs who've said that they've wanted several times to start making their own dog food but every time they seek out research on the topic they get scared away from ever trying.

Look. Dogs have lived with humans for thousands and thousands of years. I won't pretend that breeds have always been the same: your shi tzu probaly doesn't have the same dietary needs as the closest ancestor to the Anatolian shepherd, for instance, because the latter lineage is much more cohesive and rooted in a dog that's more... dog like. But that doesn't mean you should believe big ag's claim that you could never even approximate a healthy diet for your friend. It's kind of like saying you could never feed your children healthy food, even if you were well-informed and wanted to and had access to the right ingredients to do so, and shoving in your face every study about childhood obesity and skin issues and allergies and then selling you a pellet to feed them for every meal because clearly that's what's best for them. Look, we're on the far end of distrust about these things, and we don't need you to meet us there, but come on. If we can be a little lucid about how much marketing has taken over our world and eroded our capacity for self-reliance, I think we can start to get a little unscared about the potential for poisoning our animals and think about what people used to do -- because I'm sure people didn't always used to get it right, but they did have dogs, and those dogs did good work, and could not have always been suffering and sickly and dying at a young age, or we probably wouldn't still know dogs as staple human companions, aids, and protectors. If we calibrate our attentiveness to our animals' needs and re-orient to their health not as this kind of anxiety to be had but just a balance to be struck and re-struck when imbalance occurs (just like our own health) we can probably do fairly well for them, assuming we don't get lazy about the task of making their own food.

Okay, but it's time consuming. How can you expect me to start meal prepping for my dog? I can't even meal prep for myself!

This is fair, and I get it. I have a three year old and two one-and-a-half year olds, and a small farm to run. If you don't even feed yourself good food, and find yourself ordering delivery half the week, maybe that's a better place to start. Or perhaps you could adopt some organizational practices that would help you sit down and make dog food once a week, and you'd feel like "oh shit, my dog eats better than I do" and find ways to couple meal prepping for yourself and your dog at the same time -- I mean, if you're roasting sweet potato and making brown rice already you may as well just add a few more portions to the oven or pot and then store them for yourself, too for the week, right? If your dog gets raw chicken breast you could just quickly cook one for yourself, and that's a couple lunches right there, so why not?

All I'm saying is that as modern humans we are kind of tragically busy and it feels impossible to center nutrition when we're already exhausted but this is really important: for you and for Smoky the german shepherd dog (or whoever your dog is). What if we just try to start? What if we made it a gathering with our friends on the weekends, hanging in the kitchen while our dogs play out back? Why not stack activities? At first maybe it seems hard but once you make anything a rhythm it gets easier, and you're probably spending time on stuff that doesn't make you or your furry friend healthier, like binging that latest show or whatever, so it's definitely not impossible.

But also, if you really just can't find it within yourself, that's totally fine, don't beat yourself up! Store this info for later, because maybe one day you'll change your mind or your schedule will open up or your neighbor will start raising rabbits in the back and find they have too many and you might go "oh hey, maybe now's a better time".

On puppies and their needs

If you have a new puppy, especially if they're going to be a dog who is either in work or with high activity needs, make sure you either work with a veterinary nutritionist or very, very carefully research your pup's nutritional needs. Puppies need to eat more often than adult dogs, and so their portions are normally broken up to three or four feedings a day rather than two. They have much higher caloric needs than an adult dog of the same size, so don't rely on online caloric need calculators to set their portion size. They also need more protein, more fats, and all of this must adjust quickly with their size as they grow.

Notes

  1. Additionally, it's come to my attention through research I've been doing for this article that an alarming amount of people truly believe that dogs can be satisfactorily vegan. There are some studies that are pointing to the fact that a carefully formulated vegan diet can be "complete" for dogs. This misunderstands not only nutrition, but canine instincts and what it means to be "omnivorous" in the first place and is ultimately rooted in a lot of the same misconceptions that lead humans to become dogmatic vegans who believe anyone who still engages in the "archaic" act of eating meat is a vicious murderer (with zero regard for the fact that most humans suffer from nutritional insufficiency rather than excess, that meat is the only way many without access to the products of industrial agriculture obtain sufficient protein especially in lands degraded by colonial activity and which produce less vegetation than they once did, cultural proclivities and bodily differences among cultural groups, etc.).
    Dogs can probably obtain "complete" nutrition through a vegan ration if we assume complete nutrition to be what the commercial pet and livestock industry (and broader big ag complex) claim it is (i.e: crude percentages of macro and micronutrients in a given portion, regardless of source, bioavailability or environmental and bodily interactions). But anyway, if we're going to say that "science said so", we should wait for long term studies to arrive that show that a statistically significant amount of dogs remain as healthy and behaviorally sound as a dog fed on a real diet – not kibble[2] for the same lifespan. It's likely that, because vegan dog foods are high in legume content, and the high legume content in grain-free foods seems to be linked somehow to heart disease in dogs (see subnote 2), we'll find that such vegan dog foods inevitably cause the same heart issues when fed out long term.
    Furthermore, it feels like it should go without saying that if you argue that it's silly to claim that a dog has a right to eat what it would eat if it was given a choice that you have no business having an animal in your care nor telling others how they should interact with one. The hubris involved in this statement, and the gross imposition of a human moral dilemma on an animal you're keeping in captivity is beyond my comprehension. It would likely be more moral for vegans to simply not incarcerate omnivorous or carnivorous beings where they feel they have a duty to force those beings to align with their dietary preferences.
  2. To compare the health of a dog fed a commercial, processed vegan ration with the health of a dog fed a commercial, processed omnivorous ration feels silly. Most commercial dog foods are loaded with wheat and corn (beyond the amounts recommended for a home diet), which are somewhat like feeding a human on a significant amount of white bread and potato chips, and grain free dog foods often contain significant amounts of either potatoes or legumes as fillers, both of which have been linked to heart diseases in dogs, though the exact mechanism for this is not known. Additionally, the known and long-term lack of regulation in the pet food industry means that while it's not that common for food tainted with listeria or salmonella to be sold, there are no specific guidelines for dog foods being nutritious or complete, despite their marketing.
  3. Excess shedding outside of the typical amount for your dog's fur type or a season (i.e: summer) where they normally switch from a cooler or warmer coat to the inverse is generally a sign of stress. This could be psychological stress or physiological stress, but requires investigation by you either way.
  4. Potatoes are a potential culprit linked to cardiovascular disease in dogs, though this is as a primary filler ingredient in grain-free diets. Though I can't say this for certain, it would make sense that cooked potatoes in moderation are probably fine as long as they don't make up a significant portion of your dog's diet. This seems to be true for most things, even some things that are said to be "bad" for dogs (i.e: brocolli). I haven't fed my dogs potatoes, with that being said, and they should never be fed raw.
  5. It is actually better to calculate your dog's food ration by calorie needs, not weight needs. However, knowing my dog's general calorie needs, I still generally calculate these things by weight and this is the method I use here because it's easier and generally I end up with approximately the same amounts of things. If my dog starts acting wildly hungry, though, and I've switched an ingredient, I know to go back to the drawing board and recalculate the calories in his food to double check. There are some calculators available online for humans that work for calculating how many calories are in a given amount of a common food ingredient. Calculators also exist online for approximating your dog's caloric needs based on weight and activity level, but this is where I'm trusting that if you follow any of this you are a responsible adult who takes good care of your animals and seeks help if any issues arise or if you are not confident of your ability to follow these guidelines or do additional research.
  6. Sources of research for the nutritional portion of this article: