We usually feed our puppies dog food, the dry type. But when they grow to 4 or 5 months, we give them cooked food. The cooked food is usually boiled meat or fish that has no seasoning whatsoever. There was a time that dog food had a shortage and dog owners were in a scramble in pet shops and supermarkets. That cooked food is the idea of my husband and that's the time I realized his wisdom. Another incident was the recall of canned dog food from Thailand. I forgot the issue but a recalled item means it is not good. By the way, we feed our dogs 3 times a day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Our dogs are already used to that frequency of feeding so the volume of food is not much otherwise they would be obese.
Pickles eats both. I don't cook separately for him but I always share a little if it's something he can eat. If I but a rotisserie chicken, I'll give him the drumsticks and half a breast. Not all at once though.
When they warn against feeding your dog or cat people food, I think the concern is that we generally spice our food with stuff that may not be good for the animal, or probably us, for that matter. I can't imagine that there could be a problem with feeding cooked meats to your dog if it's not salted or spiced. I don't have dogs but when I'm cooking something for myself, such as chicken for soup, or some kind of stew meat, I'll cut off parts of the meat that I'm not particularly fond of, such as the fat, but I'll include generous portions of the lean meat around it, and cook that separately for my cats. The young one won't eat it for some reason, but the older ones do.
I buy the plain chicken always because I watch my sodium intake. Harder to get but I don't buy it that often anyway. Whole foods always has it though but the price is $14.99, sometimes on sale for $9.99.
@Chrissy Page , are you saying a chicken cost $14.99 normally? Here, I can buy the best cuts of beef for that. I buy the large family size packages of chicken thigh for about $7.00. I wonder if I rented one of those refrigarator truck, filled it with meat, and sold it there, if I could pay for my next trip there? I think that might be a bubble idea, (they burst), instead of a lightbulb moment.
I'm talking about a cooked rotisserie chicken at Whole Foods. Yep, that's the price in Monterey at least. I seldom go to the one in Fresno. It's in Fig Garden and that's about 6 miles from me....too far, lol.
They opened up a Whole Foods Grocery here, and it is on our way to the fitness center; so one day we decided to stop by and see what they had there. We were both really disappointed, and didn't think that Whole Foods had much of anything different than a regular grocey store, they just charged double or triple for you to buy it there. Chicken was $10 a lb at that store, and not the $1.29 (or even .99) that most other stores sell chicken for. Just about everything else we looked at was the same way, just regular food, but way overpriced. Now, here, we have a store called Earthfare, and I really like that store. It is too expensive for our budget, too; but they have the coolest things there that you can't find in other stores. We have gone there a few times and shopped, and I just love looking up and down the aisles to see the interesting things that they carry there. They charged over a dollar more per carton for the same Greek Gods yogurt that I buy at Kroger, so they definitely inflate prices on regular items as well; but if they were not so far away and so expensive, I would shop there a lot more often. So, I am bursting your bubble, @Ina I. Wonder . The expensive chicken is only at the store where Chrissy shops, and probably not everywhere else. Don't load up your refrgerator truck and head for California just yet.
I have been making some peanut butter and coconut oil treats for Chipper and Tootsie, and they love them. The coconut oil is wonderful for their coats, and I was adding it into the dog food; but Tootsie seems to get most of the food, and I was concerned that Chipper was not getting enough good coconut oil in his diet. I had read about making these treats for dogs before, and then forgot until @Frank Sanoica posted about his wife making a similar thing for her low-carb diet. All you do is warm up some peanut butter, and then add about twice as much coconut oil (softened), and whicsk it all up good. Then I put it into a small flat storage container and set it in the refrigerator and it hardened. I keep it in the fridge and give the dogs some little chinks every day. It tastes and smells like peanut butter, and I have been eating it , too. Before I was trying to just swallow the spoonful of plain coconut oil, and even when it was hardened, it was not very tasty. Now, it is kind of a healthy version of a Reeses Cup. WARNING : Do NOT put the peanut butter jar in the microwave ! There was only a bit in the bottom, so I thought I would just warm it up enough to get it out easily. I turned on the microwave and the whole thing exploded in a bright yellow flash ! (I have not touched the microwave since then), and I pushed the stop button in a panic, while screeching at the top of my lungs (one has to keep one's husband's life interesting , after all), and Bobby came hurrying in to rescue me. Apparently, the little bits of aluminum from the wrapper across the top were not completely off, and that caused the fire and explosion. I was sure I had ruined the microwave; but I didn't. Next time, I will just scrape out the jar.
@Yvonne Smith That's curious! My wife places the whole jar of peanut butter in the micro every morning, for 15 seconds. Can't break her of the habit, she claims it softens the top part of the contents. I tried it, felt no difference. There has never been a repercussion save for her scorn for my ridicule! Frank
@Chrissy Page sorry, I just read this,,Why don't you buy your whole chicken at Costco? I don't know what it is in Calif. but here it is only 3.99 and it is quite a large chicken too. 14.99 for a whole chicken, Indeed!! Anyway, my cat is just supposed to be eating that special expensive vetinary approved food now...so cooking for him is a moot point. I would probably sneak him some cooked chicken every now and again though. I think it is the salt and spices that are bad for the animals.
On the top of the fresh container of peanut butter is a seal which apparently has aluminum, or some kind of metal in it, and then is glued on the top . Usually, it just peels off; but sometimes, parts of it stick to the jar if you are not thorough when removing the seal off of the top. I think that there was still a bit of this around the edges, and I didn't even think about it possibly being metallic. The worst thing was that it didn't just spark and crackle, it literally exploded in a ball of yellow fire and a loud "BOOM !" in the whole microwave. Since it was an almost empty jar of peanut butter, I just scraped out the last of it with the spoon, and stirred in the coconut oil. The dogs look forward to having their "peanut butter treat" every day now. I have been enjoying it , too, and getting my coconut oil while they are getting theirs.
That price was for an unsalted rotisserie chicken at whole foods. I know chicken is cheaper elsewhere. I'm not a member at Costco anymore anyway....I only go when visiting my daughter. I don't need anything in bulk anymore, so I let my membership expire.
My dogs eat only diamond lamb and rice dry food. We had to put our last dog down because he got diabetes. The vet said it was from eating people food.
I went to my local HEB Sunday to do my weekly shopping. I took the time to check out rotisserie chicken because of all the different prices that seem to change from state to state. I found here in Texas, the average charge is $6.99, which isn't a bad price for a rotisserie cooked chicken. Izzy's vet recently said he is allergic to the fillers they put into dry dog food. We weren't sure what was causing his allergies for a long time, then my 16 year old golden retriever died the first of Febryary, and I quit buying the dry food. We also put Izzy on a little pill that tells his brain that he doesn't itch anymore. Everything started to get better. Then my grandson, Bobert, had moved in by March to help me for a bit, and it has worked so well that we decided to be roommates. Bobert has a twenty pound Jack Russell, Taco, that we brought to my house in April. Well Izzy started nibbling on Taco's dry food, and his allergies got so bad that he had bloody spots on his little spine. The vet said stop his access to the dry food. That worked. So now Izzy is eating only the broiled chicken I have fed him since he was tiny. So I was wondering if any of you have tried that Blue Buffalo dry dog food. It's suppose to be all natural, and Izzy looks at dry dog food as treats, and he looks so said when Taco get his food.
Real foods, such as chicken, beef, etc. are not going to cause harm to your pet unless you prepare it as we generally prepare food for ourselves, with spices and other stuff. In other words, it's the other stuff that is found in people food that is the problem. Not the dog food, because I don't have dogs, but I used to work for Blue Buffalo, and my cats have been eating Blue Buffalo dry food almost exclusively for years, since shortly after the company began in business, and much of the wet food they eat is Blue Buffalo as well. There are other good foods, but you won't go wrong with Blue Buffalo.