posted 01-27-2004 05:15 PM         

Below is a very simple diet for healthy adult dogs with canine epilepsy. It is easy to make, and is also very balanced nutritionally. There is a success story at the end of this article. There are two ways of making this recipe.

SLOW COOKING

1. Using a crock pot which cooks while you are at work or at night while sleeping. The only thing you need to add to this diet is vitamin E

2. Cooking all the ingredients separately. The only thing you need to add to this diet is vitamin E.

1. Healthy Adult Diet - Crock Pot recipe

This can be put together in approximately 20 minutes and ready 8 hours later. It requires a crock pot or slow cooker, which can be purchased at any department store or discount chain. You can also order one for $25. Model# 3045-FRP on line at:
http://www.canine-epilepsy-guardian-angels.com/crock_pot_diet.htm

You will need the following ingredients:

4 halved boneless, skinless chicken breasts - frozen. These can be purchased at any Wal-Mart. They are usually around $8.00 for a package of 10. I buy the Wal-Mart brand but Tyson also makes them. Or you can use 4 cups frozen fish, or 4 cups frozen lean ground meat (about 2 lbs)

1 cup zucchini sliced thickly
1 cup sliced carrots sliced thickly
1 cup string beans cut up
1/2 cup white potato cut in 2" pieces
1/2 cup yam or sweet potato cut in 2" pieces

Combine all ingredients (leave chicken breasts frozen) in crock pot along with 4 cups of water. Put crock pot on "Low" setting and cook all day while you're at work or all night while your sleeping, approximately 8 hours or until everything is tender. When it is cooled mush everything up so that the meat is mixed in well with the veggies.

If your crock pot has a removable liner, put the whole thing in the fridge. It will keep fresh for 4 days. Be sure to reheat each meal in a microwave or bring to room temp.

2. Healthy Adult Diet - cooked separately

4 cups skinned and boiled chicken or fish or ground meat
1 cup zucchini (if zucchini is not available use summer squash)
1 cup sliced carrots
1 cup chopped string beans
1/2 cup white potato
1/2 cup yam or sweet potato

Skin a whole chicken (or 2 or 3) and put in a large covered pot with water almost to the top of the chicken. Bring to a boil and simmer for 2 to 3 hours. Drain the chicken in a colander and save the chicken soup in a bowl.
Put the chicken soup in the fridge and skim the fat when cold. You can add a little of the heated chicken soup to each meal. This gives trace minerals and gelatin to the diet. Meals should not be eaten right out of the fridge but either brought to room temperature or warmed in a microwave.

Scrub the potatoes well and cut them up crosswise into 2" pieces so the skin circles the potatoes. OR, you can peel the potatoes before you cook them. Simmer the white potatoes in a covered pot for 30 minutes and then add the yam/sweet potatoes and cook both for another 30 minutes. When cooled, remove the skins.

If using ground beef, simmer in a frying pan with a very small amount of oil.
If using fish, simmer/poach in a frying pan with a small amount of water until the fish is white.

Wash the zucchini (or string beans/summer squash), carrots and celery and cut up and steam or cook in a covered pot until very tender.

Mix all the above ingredients together until it is well blended. This will give you approximately 8 cups of food. Depending on the size of your dog, you can double or triple the recipe. One recipe can be made with chicken and the next time you can make it with ground meat for variety. You should only need to make this recipe once a week.

Try and feed in 3 or 4 small meals (depending on your schedule), the last one being at bedtime. Smaller meals spread apart will burn more calories. Put one meal portions in baggies and freeze what you won't use in 3 days. Then you can put them in the fridge the day before and they will be thawed out. You should be able to cook once a week and freeze what you don't use. This recipe will stay fresh for 3 days in the fridge.

When feeding the homecooked diet; add 1/2 the recommended dosage of "Missing Link" food supplement to one of the meals each day (or other supplement of your choice). Missing Link food supplement is recommended by Dr. W. Jean Dodds to ensure that all nutritional needs are being met. Missing Link can be purchased at most pet food stores and online pet food websites. (We recommend 1/2 of the recommended daily dosage, as stated on the package, to reduce the likelihood of digestive upset.)

For full supplementation, Vitamin E and C may be given. And, 2-3 ounces of beef or calf's liver may be given (cooked or raw) once a week, as well as one chopped, hard boiled egg per week for a 20 lb. dog, 3 hard boiled eggs a week for a 90 lb. dog. Quantities may be adjusted according to weight.

Vitamin E 200 IU for a 20 lb dog - 400 IU for an 80 lb dog

When supplementing vitamin C, use Ester C. If you can't find that use sodium ascorbate or some other form of buffered vitamin C, because plain ascorbic acid may cause an upset stomach. You can buy it in powder form and add it to your dog's food, or get it in a multivitamin. The daily dosage for an adult dog is the following:

SMALL DOGS: 500mg
MEDIUM DOGS: 1,000mg
LARGE DOGS 1,500mg
GIANT DOGS: 2,000mg

References:

W. J. Dodds, DVM
Healthy Pets - Naturally newsletter

posted 01-27-2004 06:31 PM         

Also, dogs don't have the enzymes necessary to digest grains and veggies. If you puree the veggies they will at least get some use out of it, but they don't need it.

posted 01-28-2004 07:25 AM         

If you are interested, you can join here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rawfeeding/

I have found it to be an easy way to feed and I am still finding meat sources to make it even more economical.

"Give Your Dog a Bone," by Ian Billinghurst lists these reasons for not cooking food (there is more detail in the book):

destroys vitamins
destroys enzymes
destroys anti-oxidants
reduces protein value and availability
produces "foreign" foods
no teeth cleaning
no exercise required to eat it

More on the "foreign" foods - "When food is cooked, the...major nutrients are changed. The greater the degree of cooking, the greater the changes. The greater the changes, the more indigestible the food becomes. Also, the more the body regards it as foreign molecules." This results in all sorts of things such as allergies, auto-immune dieseases (like arthritis), and cancer.

Cooking does make the food more palatable, which is not necessarily good. Billinghurst says that cooked food is "addictive" because it tastes so good. A result of this is the loss of the dog's instinct to choose foods. It can also create an unbalanced diet because the dog will develop favorites and "train" you to only cook those particular foods. It makes changing the diet more difficult and contributes to obesity.

The bottom line: "When food is cooked, it retains sufficient nutrients to keep your dog alive with no obvious immediate problems. It does not, however, allow your dog to have a long, healthy, trouble-free life. It is responsible for much ill health including cancer, kidney disease, heart disease, arthritis, pancreatic disease etc. In short, dogs fed on cooked foods live shorter, less healthy, more miserable lives."

Then again, you should hear what he has to say about kibble and canned food. So I really don't know if cooking food is a step up from kibble or not, I just know it is a leap down from raw.

That being said, perhaps if you supplement enzymes, vitamins, and anti-oxidants, some of the bad effects can be countered. But when you start messing with a lot of supplements and trying to determine how much is enough and not too much and balance with the other components of the diet - well it all gets rather complicated.

Mother Nature had it right to begin with. A prey animal has everything in the correct proportions for our dogs to eat. People have been trying to approximate that ever since with kibble because it is convenient.

Another book that has been recommended (i have not read it yet) is Tom Lonsdale's "Raw Meaty Bones" (http://www.sitstay.com/store/books/diet1.shtml).

Sorry to go on for so long. I think if you are going to cook for your dog, you will not see any bad effects right away and it may help with your dog's issues. But I would do a LOT of research to make sure you are giving her everything she needs.

And I would really consider raw feeding instead.

posted 01-28-2004 08:39 AM         

I will continue to research before I decide to cook for her.

[This message has been edited by Linda (edited 01-28-2004).]

posted 01-28-2004 09:31 AM         

I dont believe in feeding the same dog food everyday and i wont feed raw foods.

my dogs get a different make of dog food everyday aswell as any of the above meats.
This has not upset there guts most dogs if you change there food to often they will get the runs lucky i dont have that problem with mine.

posted 01-28-2004 11:56 AM         

Whole veggies might be good for cleaning teeth, but they pretty much come back out the way they went in.

posted 01-28-2004 03:21 PM         

but thanks for the advice about pulping them.

posted 01-28-2004 07:04 PM         

quote:

---

halved boneless, skinless chicken breasts

---

Regarding cooked foods, It's said that cooking at normal temperatures will NOT decrease the nutritional value of the food, the problem lies in the high temperatures used in commercial diets.

Here's an article addressing BARF, cooked foods, etc (it's defintely not "pro-BARF", but does bring up some interestign thoughts: http://secondchanceranch.org/rawmeat.html

I'm not really for or against ANY type of feeding program, and was actually considering a homemade feeding style for Goo before (either raw or cooked) before finding a kibble that worked for her. IMO, there are good and bad points about all the methods out there, and it's up to owners to take those into account and decide what's best from there. It all boils down to what works for you, and your dog(s).

posted 01-29-2004 09:41 AM         

Also, this statement is particularly humorous: "As for the statement that raw meat is a biologically correct food, Humans have survived healthfully on cooked foods for thousands of years. It is more than safe to say that diseases such as Cancer are not caused by cooking your meat."

Healthily?! Is there anyone on this list who does not know someone who has died of cancer? Look at the incidence of cancer, heart disease, kidney disease, diabetes, etc, among humans and tell me again how healthy we are.

Ever notice how almost everything has turned out to be a cancer-causing agent? (Of course, some of these studies are laughable, since they are so extreme in their conditions - pumping a rat full of nothing but "x" day in and day out and voila! he has cancer...) Wouldn't it be ironic if we found out that cooking our food has been killing us this whole time?

I am not saying humans should eat raw meat - but I do believe it is true the more WHOLE foods and less processed foods we eat, the healthier we will be. (Do *I* eat this way? No. But I should....) I also find the comparison between human breast milk versus formula to be a good analogy. People thought they could "duplicate" or even improve on nature with commercial infant formulas, but no matter how much they research and formulate, the real thing is still superior.

Billinghurst may not have done research on wolves, but I am not raising a wolf. He has enough "evidence" about domestic dogs in his book to convince me of his way of feeding. The health of his own dogs and countless patients seems to indicate it is a valid method of feeding and can greatly increase the health and longevity of your pet. I find the comparison between Australia pre- and post-commercial dog food and America (where commercial dog food has been popular a lot longer) and the problems commonly seen by vets in both cases to be particularly convincing.

There was a quote on another site (that can't find right now) that I always liked. It basically said that since cats and dogs have been fed mostly kibble in the last 100 years or so, they have begun to develop all the same diseases humans have - kidney, heart, cancer, diabetes, etc. It went on to ponder what humans are doing wrong with their OWN diets to cause these diseases to be so prevalent.

Anyway, that's just my take on the situation. I fed my previous dog Science Diet for her whole life (because I didn't know any better) and we seemed to have no problems with it. But then again, we don't know why she died so suddenly - a weakened immune system from a poor diet? Who knows.

Linda, definitely check into the calcium-phosphorous ratio thing. Meat with no bone is not good for your dog and can have serious consequences unless you balance it some other way. But DO NOT FEED COOKED BONES. Sorry for shouting - it's just very important.

posted 01-29-2004 12:19 PM         

My dog is 12 years old, one seizure that scared the hell out of us not to mention the pain in the pocketbook. I urge everyone to go to the epilepsy angels site and read about this prior to it happening to them.

I am hoping that doing a little bit of everything will prolong her life. Just getting her off the presevatives is a good start. The Eagle Pack food is good and my vet seems to approve. However, in order to make sure she is getting enough meat I am going to do the slow cook thing (reduced in size as she a small dog) and will supplement the cooked food,plus give dry and canned dog food. I still like the peas and carrots in there even though it is thought she does not need them. They can't hurt. She can not gain too much weight as she had patilar knee cap operation on both of her back legs and she has to stay around 6 pounds. There is no way she would eat a raw diet after all this time. She is spoiled rotten as she well deserves.

posted 01-30-2004 12:57 AM         

quote:

---

I would like to read their recipes but I am not sure I would follow their plan since I don't like their food anymore. What site do you go to find the recipes?

---

quote:

---

I saw that site before, Goob, and while I find it disturbing I did more research and I think some of the claims are not founded.

---

quote:

---

But DO NOT FEED COOKED BONES.

---