I have finally found my solution to the poisoned pet food problem! The answer is cooking for my dog. This has led me to be able to end my dependence on Hi Tor Neo Diet Pet food, which does not use free range meats, and probably tests on animals.
Dogs have different amino acid requirements than people, so just feeding them the same food as us will make them very, very sick. But I asked my veterinarian for a recipe for a low-phosphorus, low-protein dog food for my dog, and he found one, so I can give it to her and she will receive all the amino acids she needs, and will not develop nutritional deficiencies. (Disclaimer — cats are totally different from dogs amino-acid requirement-wise — they will die if given food that is nutritionally complete for dogs.)
My veterinarian found a recipe for a low-phosphorus, low protein kidney diet dog food in a dog nutrition textbook — yes, there’s a whole section on kidney diets and even a recipe in Small Animal Clinical Nutrition! It’s absolutely perfect. The recipe involves cooked white rice, cooked eggs, white bread, olive oil, salt, a calcium supplement, and a daily multivitamin.
So far, this whole procedure has been amazingly easy. I steam some rice for my dog in the morning, toss in some torn up white bread, add a little olive oil, salt, calcium powder, and multivitamin, crack an egg on top of that, microwave it for two minutes to cook the egg, stir it up, and spoon out a third of it for my dog morning, noon, and evening. It’s really easy, it doesn’t have that disgusting dog food smell I’ve never really cared for, and I enjoy feeding my dog food that actually looks good. Especially if I decide to scramble her the egg instead of microwaving it — that scrambled egg looks a lot better than kibble.
I don’t know if this is a good solution for everybody — it’s more work than opening a bag of kibble, it puts the responsibility for proper dog nutrition on my shoulders instead of some dog food company’s, and it’s a little unsettling to think that I’ll have to take my dog to the hospital several times to make sure the diet is working for her — but for me, personally, I’m really liking it. I love not having that dog food smell in the kitchen, I love not supporting cruel meat-packing plants, I love that I’m supporting organic free-range egg production (of course I buy free range eggs!), I love that I’m feeding my dog a balanced kidney diet, and I actually enjoy cooking for my dog — she’s a very small dog so it’s not much work and she does a little dance of appreciation when I put her plate on the floor. Plus my $19 rice cooker from Target takes all the effort out of cooking rice.
I am not having any trouble getting my dog to switch diets, since she’s always been really fond of rice, bread, and scrambled eggs. She does seem especially excited though by the new food since she thinks she’s getting “people food.”
So overall, I’m very happy to be cooking for my dog. I feel so relieved that I’m not potentially poisoning her with commercial dog food any more — and until the pet food recall has completely died down, I’m definitely sticking with it. I am taking my dog in to be tested for nutritional deficiencies in a month (and then regularly every few months thereafter) to make sure she’s doing okay on the new food — if she’s not, I’ll go back to Hi Tor Neo Diet.
So, if you have a dog with a special diet and are unable to find a cruelty-free pet food for him or her, or you’re really freaked out by the pet food recalls and wish to go to the trouble of cooking for your dog, I highly recommend talking to your veterinarian — maybe your veterinarian can give you a recipe for nutritionally complete dog food for that condition. Bring up Small Animal Clinical Nutriton — it has a whole chapter on cooking for your dog.
Categories : petfood
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greenchick
June 11th, 2007 at 7:19 am
Emily,
Thanks for the great recipe info. I have also been tracking the pet food recall and recipe suggestions with great zeal. Have you read the latest news about acetaminophen found in pet food? They have not yet identified the brands but as soon as they do I am going to post it on my blog.
http://thisgreenlife.wordpress.com/2007/06/08/acetaminophen-in-pet-food/
Emily
June 11th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
So glad that helped you! I had not heard about the acetaminophen — I’ll have to check it out — and I’ll definitely read about it on your blog!
Brandi
September 7th, 2007 at 10:46 am
Hi. My greyhound has recently been diagnosed with what may be the start of kidney diease. My traditional vet, who I respect and trust when it comes to non-nutritional advice, recommended one of the commercial dog foods for renal diease. Since then I have beern trying to find an alternative to the companies that test on animals who make this food. (Not to mention the poor quality of the ingredients.) It seems as though the only alternative was to home cook (which my partner and I had been considering for some time anyway). However, all the recipes (until now) that I found for low protein and phosphorus food called for meat and animal fat. As a vegan, I can deal with using eggs, but the level of effort that was going to be needed to make sure we were buying local meat from a “humane” (whatever that means) farmer was more than a bit overwhelming. (Not to mention the gross out factor of the prospect of having meat in the house.) I will do what it takes to make sure my girl is healthy, so thank you SO much for posting about this and saving me from having to buy meat!!!
Did you buy the book or get the recipe straight from your vet? Does the book have more than the one recipe??
Thanks again!!!!!
Brandi
Emily
September 7th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
Hi Brandi!
I’m so glad you wrote in — I was wondering if anyone out there had similar problems to mine. It’s great to know there’s at least one other person!
Unfortunately, I have a confession to make. The recipe I found in Small Animal Clinical Nutrition actually does contain meat (there is only one recipe — the cooking for your pet chapter has a bunch of different recipes for other conditions — it was written before many specialty pet foods were available, and people had to cook for their dogs if they wanted to keep them alive).
However, I talked to my veterinarian, and he is letting me substitute more eggs instead of meat in the recipe (because I dislike cooking meat — I get a little grossed out). He was actually okay with my adding-more-eggs-idea because he says eggs are actually a more complete protein than meat, so (theoretically) there should be less chance that my dog would develop any kind of amino-acid deficiency eating eggs. Though he stressed that I would have to bring my dog in frequently to make sure she’s not developing any kind of nutritional deficiency, because some diets just don’t work for some dogs, and because I’m not following the recipe exactly.
Anyway, I would highly recommend you talk to your veterinarian — my veterinarian is actually very traditional (and had to be convinced I was really determined) but was very willing to work with me. He was not too knowledgeable about cooking specialty diets, but he conferred with the other veterinarians he knew, and the veterinary nutrition book, and found a chapter that was all about cooking for your dog in it, and lent it to me. Also, he’s doing follow-up bloodwork for me every few months to make sure that my dog is doing okay on her homemade diet, which makes me feel a lot better about the situation. I would definitely not be doing this without bloodwork every few months — I really don’t want my dog to have any deficiencies. (That being said, if you talk to your veterinarian and he/she gives you any trouble, you should mention Small Animal Clinical Nutrition and the fact that I’ve been using the recipe from it and it’s working well so far.)
I really wish there were a standardized vegetarian/vegan recipe for kidney disease — I did email Vegedog, and they supposedly are working on a low-phosphorus, low-protein diet, but are nowhere near ready to produce it, which is too bad . . .
Sarah
October 1st, 2008 at 3:04 pm
My dog has just been diagnosed with kidney disease and I am hunting around for a low-phosphorus, low-protein diet that is not difficult to follow and just when I thought that it was to no avail - I found you blog! Thank you for sharing. Can you tell me how much rice you use in each serving?
Regards,
Sarah
Emily
October 21st, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Hi Sarah!
I’m sorry to hear your dog has been diagnosed with kidney disease. I recently had to switch my dog over to a no-bread-more-rice recipe, which along with the no-beef more eggs alteration to the recipe means that the recipe I’m now using is nowhere near the original one from Small Animal Clinical Nutrition, and the recipe has to be altered depending on weight of your dog, so I don’t think the amount of rice I use in each serving would be much use to you — I’d highly recommend getting ahold of a copy of Small Animal Clinical Nutrition and discussing the recipe with your veterinarian instead. Your veterinarian or a colleague of your veterinarian probably has a copy — call him/her up and ask!
I did find a recipe online that claims to be the one from Small Animal Clinical Nutrition — though I’m really not sure if it is, and I’d have to hunt up my photocopy to make sure — and the recipe seems to be missing a measurement for its beef ingredient, so I’m not sure how helpful it will be to you, but maybe it will be a starting point? The recipe is at
http://www.vetprof.com/clientinfo/KidneyDiseaseInDogs/diet.htm
and it’s the one called:
Rice, Beef and Egg Diet (Balanced low-protein, Low-phosphorus homemade formulas for adult dogs ***)
I hope that was useful to you!
Stacy
January 29th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Just one note to the home cooked meals for kidney disease… the egg yolks are not recommended, or at least using all of them. If you need 2 eggs, my vet suggested using 2 egg whites and one yolk. I save the yolks for baking (for people). Just FYI. I forget exactly what it was about the yolks that was bad… I think it was just the the fact that they are not as great a protein as the whites. So it was suggested to limit them.
Emily
January 30th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Hi Stacy!
Oh interesting! Thank you for writing in about that. My veterinarian was a little wary of too much egg yolk because it’s full of protein, but determined that the amount of protein the eggs were providing were within the proper bounds. However, I think that’s a GREAT idea to do 2 egg whites and 1 yolk — that sounds very promising.
So are you doing that same kidney diet for your dog too? Excellent!
Eric Milano
February 15th, 2009 at 10:44 am
Hi Emily. I really applaud your efforts to be cruelty free. I don’t know what kind of “free range” eggs you buy, but I can tell you that the “free range” label on egg packiging is really a load of chicken sh*t (sorry for the pun :). Just type “humane egg” into google and you’ll see what I mean. Or read the “Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan. There are so few options for humane chicken treatment. Its much easier to find humanely treated cows or pigs (though still very difficult of course) that I think it would be better for you to feed your dog meat (unless you are sure your eggs come from humane sources). but simply having the term “free range” means very little and usually much of the same attrocities are performed on these chickens as well.
Its not easy is it! I think the best we can do is try our best, but its so difficult in this day and age to be 100% cruelty free.
Emily
February 18th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Dear Eric,
I’m very impressed by your knowledge of the fact that animals raised for meat are treated much more kindly than animals raised for eggs/dairy! Most people have no clue.
However, I disagree with you that “free range” and “humanely raised” mean nothing — “free range” has actual meaning — farmers that label their eggs “free range” must “demonstrate to the USDA that the poultry has been allowed access to the outside.” (The phrases “natural,” “naturally nested,” “happy chickens,” etc., have all been co-opted by inhumane farmers and do mean absolutely nothing.)
http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Fact_Sheets/Meat_&_Poultry_Labeling_Terms/index.asp
(Though that only applies to eggs — apparently “free-range” is unregulated for pork/beef, interestingly enough.)
However, and I realize you probably haven’t read my numerous other posts on humane farming:
http://www.livingcrueltyfree.com/category/cruelty-free-farming/
but there’s also been a huge increase in humane farming certification over the past few years — I’ve written more about it here —
http://www.livingcrueltyfree.com/2008/03/12/how-to-become-a-humane-omnivore/
but basically, you can now buy eggs that are Animal Welfare Association approved, American Humane Association Free Farmed Approved, or Humane Raised and Handled Certified, and you can be sure that the chickens who laid those eggs lived relatively free-of-suffering lives. (Of course — if you’re not buying eggs from Black Hen Farm in Santa Cruz,
http://www.livingcrueltyfree.com/2008/02/27/humane-farming-100-cruelty-free-eggs-black-hen-farm/
you’ll be saddened to learn that humanely-raised egg-laying chickens, while not horrifically debeaked, squished into cages the size of a laptop, and unable to stand up or turn around for all of their miserable six-month lives, are usually slaughtered as soon as they stop producing eggs (2 years out of their potential 9-year-life-span, or suffocated upon birth if they are male.)
So — I really think you should check out the humane certification, and see how much it’s progressed — I think you’ll agree that buying humanely certified eggs is just as ethical, or more so, than buying meat-products. (But not factory-farmed eggs! DEFINITELY not.
(I love the Omnivore’s Dilemma! It’s a great book.)
Regards,
Kate
May 31st, 2009 at 2:53 pm
NO!!!!!!!!!! NO SALT FOR A LOW-PHOSPHOROUS DIET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Emily
May 31st, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Um, why no salt? Small Animal Clinical Nutrition’s recipe calls for it. Don’t dogs need a trace of salt to live?
Jenni
December 17th, 2009 at 7:27 am
I heard that the “no salt/low salt” edict is only applicable for dogs who may have high blood pressure.
On the other hand, Emily, I very much enjoyed your post. I’m curious to know how this diet faired over the long term. Were there any nutritional or vitamin deficiencies?
Emily
January 24th, 2010 at 6:51 pm
It fared quite well over the long term, thanks for asking! No nutritional or vitamin deficiencies, luckily, and my dog ended up living much longer than many of her breed.
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