Last year, or maybe it was this one, who knows they all kinda blend into the same, my dog got sick. Something was wrong with him. Either his intestines were developing a serious disease, his food was poisoning him, he'd contracted a parasite or infection... We gave him every possible medicine. I changed his food. We even treated our other dog in an attempt to eliminate her carrying something she was transferring back to him, despite her not displaying symptoms herself. Nothing worked. He had me running him out to the bathroom at all hours of the night. He gave me dirty looks every time I put his food down and half the time refused to eat it. Yet he was still my baby dog. Twelve years old, maybe, but he still wanted to play and love and live his life to the fullest.
I had to figure out how to make him better before his intestinal inflammation turned into that aforementioned serious disease. Following my vet's advice, I took both dogs off their commercial diet and started to cook for them. Also, since they were eating chicken and turkey, I switched to beef. Twice a day I warmed up organic ground beef, apple, and spiralized white and sweet potatoes and fed it to my canines. I no longer got dirty looks when I put down that bowl o' food, let me tell you. Mealtime resumed its rightful place as my dogs' favorite time. And low and behold, he got better. My vet diagnosed him with a poultry intolerance and commended my dedication to figuring it out, not just throwing him on a lifetime of medications that don't work all that well to treat his nightmarish symptoms (sound familiar).
Perhaps I mentioned in a previous post that I'd totally burned out on this housewife crap and was no longer cooking for my husband? Needless to say, cooking for the dogs had to go. So I started researching dog food. Good God, ignorance is bliss! Let's just say that the high-priced kibble I'd been investing in, believing I was supporting their long-term health, was full of crap. In fact, all kibble is. Fillers and byproducts and meals that provide very little in the way of actual nutrition. So I kept searching. Sadly, it was nearly impossible to find dog food in any form that wasn't junk. I wound up settling on an extremely expensive New Zealand beef jerky that I mixed with a dehydrated beef and vegetable "powder," that I had to rehydrate with hot water. It was less work than sauteing ground beef and boiling spiralized potatoes every few days, but still too fussy for me. At this point I was so burnt out, I wasn't even cooking for myself anymore. Plus my dogs' enthusiasm was gone. Rehydrated gruel just wasn't as appealing as fresh ground beef. No duh.
After he got inured in July and totally stopped eating his food, I went back to cooking for the dogs. Meanwhile, my poor mother was forced to listen to forty-five-minute daily rants about the utter lack of quality dog food available at an affordable price. Then the whole "legumes can cause canine heart disease" scare broke out. Man, did I get desperate--to stop cooking, researching, and otherwise being a complete freak about what to feed my dogs. Yet I also refused to watch him get sick again. So finally I settled on a frozen raw recipe with beef and vegetables mixed with that New Zealand jerky.
Now this is where my ridiculously long story comes full circle. Because when I found out raw wasn't good for senior dogs, given that they are more susceptible to pathogens, I started lightly steaming the frozen raw food. Now I can't find a cooked food with an adequate amount of quality ingredients to replace it with. So here I sit, taking a break from researching dog food, again, to throw a frustrated fit. I'm right back where I started. Cooking, researching, and otherwise at a total loss about what food to feed my dogs.
Thanks for joining,
Leah
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