Fred had some experience with dogs, and he reached into a snack bag in his pocket for a baby carrot. He offered a carrot to the funny pink and purple polka-dotted dog. Buddy’s crooked tail began to wag.
Healthy Homemade Dog Dinners
In Buddy’s story, there is a reason that Fred lures him with baby carrots – these are one of Buddy’s favourite treats, and he just can’t get enough! Buddy loved carrots so much that they were always a major part of his daily meals – and Ladybug’s still! The book character Fred is named after my niece’s classmate back when she was in grade 1 – and he also takes after my two young nephews.
Do you make homemade food for your dogs? Not only did Buddy prefer home-made food over kibbles – Ladybug absolutely despises kibbles, which is why I had to come up with an alternative option based on what the pups’ Grandmama cooks for her two chihuahuas.
Here’s our basic thrown-together recipe and pup meal plan. I don’t use proper measurements – just guesstimations – and I like to buy organic as much as possible, since Ladybug has a sensitive tummy and eats the same thing every day! (If you have larger dogs, this might not be feasible, but the small dogs eat about a cupcake’s worth of food each per meal). Ingredients include organic or grass-fed lean ground beef, organic carrots, a kettle full of boiling water, a can of plain pumpkin puree and peanut butter (or other items you choose from the website balanceit.com).
- Get a nice big frying pan with deep sides (a pot would work well, too). Heat it up for a few minutes (you don’t need any oil as the meat will be nice and oily).
- Fry up your ground beef (one or two packages are sufficient, but you can make more if you want to make lots of pupper meals ahead of time). I like to fry it up until it is slightly browned – and then I soak up as much of the excess fat as I can with paper towel. (Too much fat upsets small dog tummies).
- While your beef is frying, peel and chop a bunch of organic carrots into rounds. At the same time, have a big kettle full of water boiling – this will speed up the rice-cooking process!
- When your beef is cooked up, add the chopped carrots and as much rice as you like – it depends if you want your “stew” to be meatier or heavier on the carbs (I think meatier is healthier for the dogs). Dump in the kettle full of boiled water too and boil it all up until the rice and carrot are cooked to perfection! (Typically, once the rice and carrot are cooked, the pupper supper has a similar consistency to cooked rice).
- Near the end of cooking, you can let this concoction simmer on low and add in other ingredients, like plain canned pumpkin and peanut butter. I found it is ideal to add these final ingredients right at the end of cooking, since they tend to stick to the bottom of the frying pan otherwise. Buddy’s vet recommended we use a site called balanceit.com that lists dog-friendly foods, and all the food groups that dogs need to have in a full home-made meal to have a balanced diet. I chose pumpkin and peanut butter for my dogs because they already love these flavours.
- A big batch of this home-made pupper supper is usually enough for around a week’s worth of meals. What I have found works best, is to have a couple of muffin tins and Ziploc bags on hand. Once the food has cooled, I spoon it into muffin tins and freeze it. This works especially well for short camping trips – right before the trip, I let the food defrost slightly, pop it out of the muffin tins, and into Ziploc bags! It lasts in the freezer for a long time and will last you well for a short trip of about 4 days if you’re using a cooler. One muffin size is the perfect meal for one small dog. I feed them twice per day, so when preparing for an adventure I pack two muffin-meals per dog per day!
Let us know if you end up trying out our concoction, and how it went for you and your dog(s)!
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*Illustration at top of page by our book’s illustrator, Meghan Taylor, @talonserena on IG*
