Some of you may know I like to cook. Here’s something simple I cook for my dogs:
That’s 6lbs of baked unseasoned 73/27 hamburger meat, sectioned into 1/2lb patties. For dinner, each dog gets 1/16 to 1/8lb of beef mixed in with their dry kibble and veggies- peas, green beans, carrots or corn, occasionally a pea & corn mix. We bag up most of it for frozen storage.
Complicated? Not really. The beef and veggies are mixed together and microwaved before mixing with the kibble. The smell attracts them like magic, then they make it all disappear.
Expensive? Also not so. Even though the hamburger is usually more expensive than canned dog food, we’re giving them less of it. We started doing this because they had gotten finicky about their wet food, often eating only a little bit of it. So we were throwing a lot of it away. Even when we gave them less, they still passed on most of it. And even so, they were a little overweight. (Not naming names, but someone else in the house* likes to give them people food snacks “by accident”.)
So between the smaller amount of meat they’re getting and the lower caloric intake, they’re looking pretty svelte. Since they’re eating everything they get, there’s almost no wasted food unless a morsel makes a successful escape over the wall of their bowls.
And I don’t know if it’s related, but they haven’t needed a dental cleaning in years. The vet says their teeth are cleaner than 99.9% of the dogs in the practice.
* Codename: “Mom”