Need Healthy Homemade Senior Dog recipes, Any help?
August 18th, 2009 | 
Author: DJ asked:
Looking for healthy Senior Dog recipes. Due to my dog having health problems I had to switch from his Solid Gold Dry food due to him refusing to eat it (never has done for 8 years) plus if he tried he would vomit it back up. Right now I have being giving him rice, Ground serloin Beef and a beef extract. I am concerned he may be missing out on his vitamins. He is ten years old. Any help will be much appreciated. Thanks
Dog Food Secrets
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If you are feeding homecooked or a raw diet, then you MUST become educated on how to make it balanced.
Minerals often need to be balanced with each other in the homecooked diet to work well. Giving too much of one mineral and not enough of another can affect growth and cause other problems in the body. Balancing takes some study to do it right.
Just one example of an imbalance: too much phosphorus (from meat) and not enough calcium (from bones, yogurt, egg shells).
If calcium is deficient in the blood, the body will withdraw some from the bones to insure enough calcium is in the blood stream for regulation of the heart muscle. Bone can lose up to 30% to 40% of its calcium before a deficiency becomes apparent.
You don’t say what the health problem is. That would also be a consideration in the formulation of the diet. You might want to join K9Kitchen where they discuss feeding requirements of healthy as well as dogs with all sorts of health issues.
give the dog a mulit vitamin like 1 a day
I feed my Westie (she’s five) a combination of lean ground beef (95% lean), Barley Dog, Halo’s Xtra-c, Missing Link (great vitamin and fiber supplement) and Nutro Natural Lamb and Rice kibble. The ratio is:
1/4 cup beef
1/8 tsp X-tra C
1/2 tsp Missing Link
1/4 tsp Barley Dog
3/4 cup kibble (smaller size bites for small dogs)
enough tap water to make a gravy out of the powdered ingredients then add kibble and beef
My dog was very finiky. I started out feeding her Canidae which is a great kibble, but after a year and a half she only weighed like 14 lbs…a bit thin for a Westie. Then I started feeding this diet and now she’s up to almost 19 lbs. Look these supplements up on the web…they are some of the best vitamin supplements you can give your dog.
I have a 10 y.o. Doberman and a 7 y.o. Great Dane. I used to feed Solid Gold, but it caused some loose stools. We feed senior formula from Flint River Ranch AND a home cooked diet. My vet would prefer 100% home cooked food, which we have done for months on end at times. (Sometimes with multiple jobs it is just too much work.)
My vet says not to worry about calcium, and most dogs, like people are probably getting too much protein. We feed eggs, salmon, lentils, brown rice, various fruits & vegetables and leftover food.
We always give them ground flax seed, fish oil pills, cod liver pills, and olive oil.
If I had the time, I would cook 100% of the time for my dogs, and I wouldn’t worry about protein/ calcium/ etc.
But that is me, and what my veterinarian and I have agreed is best for my dogs.
Have you talked with your veterinarian about why your dog is not eating and vomitting? It can be a sign of disease, such as in the southwest, Valley Fever.
Good luck! You really have to dig to get information about non-raw homecooking for dogs.
Check my link and think about giving this food a try-it is called “Life’s Abundance” and is a great food. My four dogs ages 10 to 1 year all eat it as does my cat( the cat food) and it is for all life stages-if your senior is overweight there is a weight loss formula for dogs as well.
Feeding dog recipes that are not balanced by a vet nutritionist are not a good idea as you are right that your dog will be missing essential nutrients that all pets need.
The site is very informative and has a video clip that you can watch plus lots of information on all ingredients used.
Hope this helps.
be carafull homefood is really bad if they never eat before
Hi,
You can feed a well balanced diet by cooking for your dog.
I highly reccomend the following book by Donald R Strombeck- Home-Prepared Dog and Cat Diets-the Healthful Alternative. You can purchase this book at Amazon or Barnes and Noble..
You did not mention if he has any medical issues.
This book covers recipes for renal probelms, skin,Urinary tract, Heart,pancreatic and hepatic diseases.
A basic maintanance diet recipe is this
(I picked this recipe since I see you are already using beef and rice)
This recipe supports the caloric needs of a 30 pound dog
1/2 pound very lean beef (raw weight) cooked
2 Cups rice, long grain-cooked
2 Tablespoons,Sardines,
canned,tomato sauce
1 Tablespoon Vegetable (canola) Oil
1/4 teaspoon salt-potassium chloride
5 bonemeal tablets (10 grain equivalent)
1 Multiple Vitamin-mineral tablet
be careful some dogs have really sensitive stomachs and get sick really easily!!! they sell dog cookbooks at a bunch of places
Try contacting a Holistic Pet Store or try the frozen raw food on the market. There are many websites also for homemade dog food recipes plus books. I use Prairie medallions as part of my dogs’ diets. Basically just feeding one type of food, beef, will be insufficient..one needs to use as many diff sources of protein, carbs, veggies etc as possible. Personally I prefer to buy a tested one than fooling around with the stuff and poss hurting my dogs.You could try a diff dry senior food as well, there are many diff foods with novel proteins such as venison, fish, buffalo etc..
That’s the basic bland diet and will contain most of the nutrients he will need. You can get a good, high quality dog multi-vitamin from your vet or pet store - Pet Tabs in the brand I use.
I hope this helps.