Wife kitteh makes dog food for the Catican Guards. We use it to supplement their kibble because the Captain of the Guard, Bodie, had lost his appetite. He's an old man now, in his 80s in terms of human years, and we love him dearly.
The dog food has ground beef, sweet potatoes, rice and frozen, mixed vegetables. We've commented that it looks pretty appetizing as a casserole and with a few seasonings, we would eat it. She makes it in large batches, separates it into gallon food storage bags and freezes the bags we're not using.
When the homemade food runs out, I thaw one of my beef stock pucks and give them that. They prefer the beef stock by a good margin.
Recently, I had some beef stock thawed in the fridge with no use for it, so I was adding it to their kibble-homemade combo mix, just to give them a treat. When the stock ran out and they were once more served only the kibble-homemade mix, they would look at their dishes and then look at me, as if to ask, "Where is the good sauce, daddy?" In fact, for two meals running, they only picked at their food.
I remained strong and didn't pull out more stock. I didn't want to make that the new standard and run through my stock of stock. It made me wonder why dog food can't taste like meat. This morning, I looked up the best-tasting dog foods and discovered that dog food is actually taste-tested by people.
It's nice work if you can get it, I suppose.
In any case, here's the list of the best-tasting kibbles ranked by someone who claims to know what dogs want. No warranty is implied with this list, use at your own risk and your mileage my vary.
- Taste of the Wild Pacific Stream Dry Dog Food
- Wellness CORE Original Flavor
- Blue Buffalo Chicken And Brown Rice Recipe Adult Dry Dog Food
- Natural Balance Wild Pursuit Chicken, Turkey Meal, And Quail
Quail? Really? What, are these quail that got caught in the threshing machine or something? How do you get enough quail to make a difference?
Whatever. Blue Buffalo is available locally, so we might try that. Anything to get those big, round, soulful eyes to look elsewhere.
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| The Catican Guards in action. |
2 comments:
Yeah, we are in a similar situation with our 17-year-old Jack Russell Terrier. She used to eat kibble, but over time got less interested and eventually made it clear that she would literally starve before eating any more of it. Currently she gets a variety of different things, because if she gets the same thing day after day she loses interest. Sometimes it is scrambled eggs, sometimes it is various cheap cuts of meat, sometimes it is liver, sometimes it is bread with a bit of milk. There have been times, like when I was making the ground beef and rice with cheese, that I actually did have the same thing for dinner as I was making for the dog.
The problem with the "fancy" dog foods, is they start getting as expensive as the food that we make for ourselves, so we might as well feed them what we are eating. And considering that, up until maybe the last 100 years or so, dogs mainly subsisted on cheap meat and table scraps, I don't really see a problem with feeding them that now.
You bring up a good point that I have not explored. I wonder what the cost of the fancy dog foods are compared to the cost of wife kitteh's homemade food. I'll have to look into that.
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