How to Safely Switch Your Dog's Diet to Homemade Dog Food

With the recent pet food poisoning scare from such well-known manufacturers as Eukanuba and IAMS, pet owners are understandably concerned about feeding their dogs out of a can. Many are shifting to feeding them cooked hamburger and other human-style meats.

This is a mistake as well. Dogs are not strict carnivores. In the wild, dogs and other canines will eat herbs and plants, or they will consume the stomachs (and contents) of their prey. They don't do this because they're sick or gross. They do it because they need certain amino acids that are found only in plants.

Instead of feeding your dog only meat, try these blends.

Homemade Dog Food Recipe Basics

First realize that your dog needs a diet of about 40% meat, 30% vegetables, and 30% starch. (Yes, this means your dog wasn't nuts when he stole the rolls off your table.) With a few exceptions, this means you can simply blend together foods you eat in this proportion and meet most of your dog's nutritional requirements. For instance:

• Cooked turkey, carrots, and cooked brown rice
  
• Cooked ground beef, cooked rice, and carrots
  
• Cooked pork, cooked pasta, and carrots
  
• Cooked chicken, potatoes, and carrots

You'll notice a couple of themes. First, you always want to cook the meat. Sure, your dog in the wild would eat raw meat. He would also be fairly likely to catch a case of worms. Humans didn't start cooking food because it tastes better; they started cooking it because they didn't catch diseases from cooked meat. Never feed your dog raw meat.

Second, in this list it's always a meat, a starch, and carrots. That's because there are many different vegetables and human-edible plants that can be deadly poison to dogs. Carrots fulfill your dog's vegetable nutrition needs, and he can eat as many as he wants and still be safe.