13 February 2011

A trail of rice crumbs and chicken bones

If you've read my post Time for dinner! What are we having? you know that there is a huge debate among dog owners about whether we should feed our dogs commercial food or home made dog food.
 
Hmm, not bad... Needs more parsley.
 
Aschiuta's first diet

When we first got Aschiuta, we didn't know what to feed her. Her stomach was also a bit upset because of the odd stuff she had been eating and she also had a parasite.
 
To calm her tummy, our vet told us to make her some soup: chicken, rice and a few vegetables. It was meant to be easy on the stomach, since rice is easy to digest. She loved it and we kept making it.

After all the problems went away, we figured we should buy her some kibble. The vet sold some good brands too and gave us samples of each. Needless to say, she was very young and didn't know how to eat the small kibble, so we put it in her soup and all was ok.

Kibble dibble. Yum yum

Since the vet insisted that we feed Aschiuta only kibble, we tried to teach her to eat it. She didn't like it much, and couldn't chew it properly. She did eventually eat from our hands and that's how it was for a while.

One time, we decided to buy dog food from a nearby pet shop, so we got the most advertised one (one of the only we knew about). This led to a lot of problems and you can read about them in The Vet.

Just like Mom used to make it...

After all the problems with the dog food and visiting Brasov with Aschiuta for the first time, we went back to chicken and rice. My fiance's mother had two dogs of her own before the two cats and only fed them home made food. One of them, she kept saying, got to a "matusalemic age" with that diet.

Aschiuta didn't even want to look at kibble again, of course. She loved her "soup", which in time had turned into a nice pilaf.

No more time to cook for pooch

After I got a job, I barely had time for a lot of things, so we decided to switch back to commercial dog food. We were careful to get a good quality one and she eventually got used to it.

We might get back to the home made food again in the future... Who knows?

4 comments:

  1. hi there, i'm dropping by from daleysdogsyears who mentioned you in her latest post :)

    i'm so glad to meet you and your littledoggie [though she doesn't look so little in your pictures]. i seem to have missed you in The Mystery Mutt Tour. I thought I'd read everyone's blog up until number 30 or something like that. it was a long, long day!

    anyway, my opinion on THIS post! i think homemade food is much better. i have 2 dogs, old Very Big and Very old. the other young [and also Big]. they used to be on part kibble, part homemade but when Rufus [the old one] got sick, we had to switch to homecooked. we decided to feed Georgia [the young one] the same.

    it has done WONDERS for them! i would never go back to commercial.

    have a happy Valentine's Day :)

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  2. I have always used kibble. Though I have given chicken and rice when any of the dogs were sick. I would like to feed my dogs a raw diet, but I can't get past the thought of dealing with all the raw meat for 6 dogs. So for me it is easier on my stomach to give them kibble. That's just what works for me.

    There is quite a fued about what to feed your dog, isn't there? I've have been on dog forums and been attacked for giving dry food. People can be ruthless about it!

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  3. I agree, people can be vicious about their opinions on how to feed your dog. It's sad there are such fights.

    I do think that, whatever you feed your dog, feed them something that's good quality and try to cover for all the dog's dietary needs.

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  4. I love the idea of cooking for my critters, but I simply don't have the time to do so. I just make sure they have a great, high-quality diet and make me peace with it :)

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