How To Make Dog Food

A new day has dawned, and HELLO, we have another contamination.  If you haven’t heard yet, melamine is thought to have contaminated rice protein concentrate.

  “This has exposed that the safety standards for pet foods are not in place in any significant way and the kind of drumbeat, day after day, of recalls has shaken consumers’ confidence in the pet food industry’s adherence to food safety standards,” said Wayne Pacelle, president and chief executive officer of the Humane Society of the United States.  
 

The tricky part now is that while both ingredients are coming from China, they are coming from different businesses and different makers, too.  And according to an Associated Press news story - the Chinese are not cooperating.

Menu Foods has updated their website again - you can see the latest press release on the updated products here or visit the dog page of Menu Foods for full recall information

This list is pretty extensive - and includes more than 50 different brands now. If you haven’t checked your brands online today - you need to do it. And if you want to make your own dog food - check out our make dog food home page.  You can also get to the video that we have online from there, too.

I don’t know about your dog, but ours are pretty spoiled - and they are getting way too many dog treats, too. It’s tough when you have so many dog lovers in the house - everybody wants to give the dogs a treat. I think we are going to have to set up a little baggie system - kind of like a pill box - but for snacks so we can control how many snacks they are getting each day.

When Mom comes over - it’s straight to the kitchen for dog treats - and if we don’t have a FULL SUPPLY - Mom lets us hear about it.

Even when our friends stop by, they head straight to the dog treat box to get them a “snackie”.  Then there’s our 4 year old who thinks he should give them snacks every day when he comes home from pre-school, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the 14 month old who thinks its cool to test gravity with food from his high chair and watch the dogs come running.

 OOOH Boy, it’s no wonder they’re overweight.

I think I have a plan that will work though. Picture attached. We did have a snack jar on the counter - nearly free feed with all the hands that go in there each day. 

 So here’s my plan. I have taken some chinese leftover soup containers - the small ones - and each morning we are going to put the maximum number of snacks each dog can have a day. And each dog will have his own container - see the pics below. So when the snack container is empty - no more snacks for the day.

The snack jar is always empty - no matter how much we buy - but I think the new way will help.

We marked individual containers with each of the dogs names - so we can limit the snacks.
In the morning we put 3-4 snacks in there, and when they’re gone - that’s if for the day.

Here’s a stacked view - it takes up the same amount of space -

and we put their initials on the side so we can see that too.

If you have other ideas - please feel free to reply.

The news just gets better and better, huh? Yesterday Menu announced the recall of ALL of their “cuts and gravy” style we pet food from store shelves EGARDLESS of the date code. On their website they also stated that any of the food you have at home you should toss, and if you pet is showing signs of illness to go to the vet immediately. 

With all this craziness, we feel really compelled to make our own dog food and found some dog food recipes to do just that.

 We’re  (uh the dogs are going to) gonna taste test  some of the recipes in the book and we’ll see if they get a paws up or a paws down - and we’ll let you know.

Keep your eyes peeled - and if I can figure out the video thing - I’ll set up the camera in the kitchen and get the taste test on tape.  Of course it may not be fair - since our dogs are so spoiled. But we do have one fussy girl - Schnauss - she is more worried about where you are then where the food is - so she would probably be the best taste test model.

 Keep your eyes on the news about the pet recall and check your cans and labels, too.  Until Later!

We turned on the news and heard stories about sick dogs and cats who seem to be affected by the pet food. So far no worries for our doggies - as we’re only feeding them dry food.  And we have no cats - so no worries there.  But if you do serve your pets a wet food - then go to the FDA’s website and look at the latest information on the Pet Food Recall.

 So far it’s just Menu Foods that makes a whole slew of products though - Go to the Menu foods recall web page to see them all.