Paleo is great for Dogs too

About 6 months ago my sister in a last resort effort to reverse her 2 dogs ongoing health problems started making her own dog food. Her older (7yrs old) pug, Bailey was overweight and having seizures on a weekly bases, her puppy Chloe, was having major stomach issues, lots of gross diarrhea. The vet put them on expensive medicines and fancy food but nothing seemed to really help.

My sister, Britta, her boyfriend, Tommy and Chloe and Bailey(aka Santa)

One of our family friends learned about a making your own raw dog food in California and was having amazing results with her great dane. So my sister decided to try it out. Within a day Chloe had no stomach issues, with in a month Bailey lost 10lbs and was not have seizures at all. Hum....have you ever read whats in dog food? Its mostly corn filler, the exact same corn that makes up most of our processed food. Corn by the way is a grain, not a vegetable. Seriously do you know that everything in the middle of the grocery store (processed) foods contain some form of corn. Watch Food Inc if you don't believe me. Its cheap, it keeps you full, you can turn it into anything and its subsidized by the government. As a profit driven organization its a no brainier to use corn in food production.  But its obviously not what our bodies or our four legged bffs are designed to eat. I was attracted to the paleo diet because it was founded by asking the question, "what is the optimal human diet". Had nothing to do with making money on a fad diet, or losing vanity pounds or even figuring out how to eat the right combination of our adulterated modern food,  it was about finding the diet that was most suitable to our bodies. It scrapped everything we knew about food and started from the beginning notion that everything we needed to thrive as a species was provided to us via the Earth. Love that simple theory. And it makes sense....our human ancestors diet would consist of lots of lean meats and seafood, some veggies, some berries and nuts when they could find them. Before farming they would not have had access to the quantity and variety of fruits and vegetables that they would have needed to survive. Sorry vegans, I know its hip to be a herbivore these days but back in the day that wouldn't have been a survival option. And I love The China Study, I took out of it that we should be eating the raw food that nature provides for us, that nature is still the best doctor and that getting off of processed foods will do miracles.  I will point out too, that there is a huge difference in being paleo (eating free range lean meats) and eating tons of fatty store bought meats. Don't be a bad example for the paleo peeps. Do your research, lean meats, game meats and seafood not fatty steaks and processed meats.  Our bodies are made to eat meat we evolved for millions of years that way. I'm not picking on your lifestyle decision if you are vegan or vegetarian, I respect your decision to live a meatless life and to take a stand for your health, it just doesn't make sense to me. So if being meatless make sense to you, go for it! I support you. I love you but I'm not in love with you.

Wait I got lost in my rant....this is about dogs. So guess what the homemade raw dog food is, PALEO!! Yay!! I was all over this when I got home and saw my sisters dogs eating the same diet that we were!

Meet Sam and Bob, our paleo dog subjects. Bob is our big baby, he's sick all the time, he has been to numerous vets that tell us different things but mostly that he has allergies and he has to be on  medications his whole life. And I guess this is not uncommon for dogs. What?! I don't accept that. Sounds so familiar to human doctors doesn't it? Why aren't we looking at the source of the problem...like maybe dogs aren't suspose to eat grains.

Our local butcher grinds up bones and everything for dog food

$31 total for 8lbs of chicken and 8lbs of beef

Apples, Blueberries, carrots, celery, green beans and flax seeds total price $18

Cut up and mixed together

Thought about eating it

Mixed the beef and chicken together

Bob gets about 2 cups and Sam get just under 1 of half and half mix 

Cleaned the bowls

split them up into daily servings

Made about a month of food froze the leftovers. 

they slept like babies : )

Going to mess around with ingredients next time. We can get our dogs the chicken with the bones in them. They are big enough that they can chew up the bones. Think it will be more cost effective. We also went to our local discount grocery store and found out when they sell their veggies on their last day. Found out for $1 they will sell a full bag of veggies that are past their sell date! That should save us some money next time too. We'll update on the costs. This batch cost us $50 for a month for two dogs. Got a lot of our information from:  http://www.barfworld.com/ you can buy it from them pre-made. We used their ingredient list to get an idea of what to put into their food and how much to feed them.

Anyone else make their own dog food? Cat food?