Sox’s Special Menu Items
Homecooking for your pet can be a great way to provide fresh food and help your pet thrive. Sox is our 14 year old dog with a laundry list of health problems. On top of these issues, she occasionally decides that the food I offer isn’t acceptable and she’d prefer to choose something else. At the moment, Sox is refusing all commercial dog foods, including raw and lightly cooked varieties. So what is Sox currently eating and how do I prepare it?
372g 95% lean ground beef – lightly browned in pan
225g sweet potatoes – baked and peeled
68g green beans – boiled
39g broccoli – boiled
37g blueberries
19g banana
21g canola oil
12g BalanceIt Original supplement
This recipe takes 15-30 minutes to put together and makes enough food for one day (2 meals) for a 45lb dog.
Step 1: Measure out the ingredients and cook the potatoes. Potatoes can be baked for 30 minutes or microwaved for 6 minutes if you are pressed for time.
Step 2: Lightly brown the ground beef in a skillet, stir often and add a small amount of water if meat starts to stick to your pan.
Step 3: Boil green beans and broccoli for 5 minutes.
Step 4: Peel sweet potatoes once cooled, then add potatoes, green beans, broccoli, blueberries, banana, canola oil, and iodized salt into a blender and blend until smooth.
Step 5: Fill two tupperware containers with half ground beef and half fruit/veg blend. Refrigerate until ready to use.
Step 6: MEAL TIME! Microwave 1 meal for 45 seconds to make sure the old dog can smell it, then add Omega 3 supplement and Balanceit supplement. Mix well.
Sox gets her fruits and veggies blended together, because her sensitive old lady GI tract can no longer process chopped foods. (Blueberries come out looking like blueberries in her stool!). So to aide digestion, she basically gets homemade baby food. The blended blueberries make the pretty orange blend into a gross brown blend, but she isn’t complaining yet.
Please note that the salt can not be every day table salt. It must be Iodized salt, because this recipe would lack iodine without it. There are natural food sources of iodine, but again, Sox is picky. The omega 3 fish oil and Balanceit supplements should be added just before serving, otherwise the fish oil can go rancid and heating the Balanceit Original supplement will break down the supplement, rendering much of it useless. Balanceit does now offer a heatable supplement for large batch cooking at a higher price.
This full recipe is 40% Protein, 38% Fat, 22% Carbs. It is OK to feed this diet for a few days without adding supplements, but for long term use, make sure you slowly introduce the supplements into the food until you are adding the correct amounts. Without the Balanceit supplement, this recipe is deficient in selenium, phosphorus, thiamin, riboflavin, copper, calcium, vitamin D, and iodine.
Stay tuned for more “Sox Special Menu Items”… as I’m sure she’ll change her mind soon.
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