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Posted by Pat B! on December 28, 2008, 3:55 am, in reply to "Thank you!! msg"
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When I decided to take my guy off of commercial and start making his own food, I found that the various "factions" of raw and home-feeding had VERY strong feelings when it came to "their way was right and everyone else's advice was full of %$#@!". No matter WHAT recipe I'd post to ask about, someone had some reason or another that I was going to end up killing (or almost that bad!) my dog on it. It was very discouraging! It seemed like I was going to have to read about a dozen different books on raw feeding and home-prepared diets and then somehow sort out for myself what I felt made the most sense, and I just didn't have either the time or the energy for that (this was in the midst of the "rolling recalls" of 2007, and I was scared and somewhat desperate to get my dog off of commercial - but onto . . . what?)
So I was very relieve when I came across the BalanceIt website that I posted about earlier. And my guy did pretty well on that, but he IS 13 years old, and so recently learning he was beginning to show some abnormal kidney values didn't come as a complete surprise.
That's when I got the Strombeck book and - as you've noticed - I also thought the recipes seemed kind of bland. On the other hand, dogs aren't people, and we can't necessarily assume that what is or is not bland to us will be the same to them.
I've ended up going to a different solution - someone I respect a great deal pointed me to the DogAware site ( http://www.dogaware.com/ ) and I'm feeding an Honest Kitchen premix (you mix it with raw) and selecting meats that are low in phosphorus which is apparently harder on the kidneys than protein. Additionally, the raw meat proteins are supposed to be easier for the canine system to process, so I thought "What the heck!" and started giving it to him, and at his last checkup, his kidney values are coming back down into normal range, so it appears to be working!
Anyway, that's a sort of long, rambly non-answer that is sort of to say that I feel your pain when it comes to trying to get someone to give you a straight answer on home prepared diets and recipes. Which is probably why so many people just give up and go back to commercial.
But here's something to think about. People have been feeding their dogs "leftovers" from their own meals for a long, long time before commercial diets came on the scene. And dogs seemed to get by pretty well that way. But then in those days, people probably ate better, too - less processed food, and more healthy stuff from "closer to the farm". If people were eating better, more balanced meals, then what they had available as leftovers for the dog probably had a lot of those same attributes.
And I don't know that I've ever met a parent who was required to complete a study in human nutrition before they were deemed capable of feeding their children. Yet parents seem to manage feeding their kids, somehow. So all this fear-mongering about how difficult it is to properly feed a dog can seem a bit over-the-top when viewed in that kind of context.
And I do know this - finding melamine in dog food has turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg - a fact that many of us following the rolling recalls were predicting, and have been sadly finding to be true. So I gotta think that compared to poisoning your pet's kidneys with "melamine supplementation", a person with good sense and some basic attention to good nutrition is bound to do better.
Off the soapbox - none of this helps when your critter is feeling poorly. You just want to know WHAT to do to make them feel better. I hope Tofi feels better soon!
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