This is Apple after 3 months of home cooked food. Still the same confidence but this time with the body of a lean mean fighting machine. Guess her age now? She is 9 years old. Almost a senior. Yet she has the energy of a 1 year pup. Can't help but feel proud.
Every once in a while you will come across an article or a video that will change your life. For me and my dog that kind of video was a TED talk by Rodney Habib titled 'Why Don't Dogs Live Forever?'. After this video, I explored other online resources along with consultation with my vet and experienced this life changing transformation with Apple. She had ACL surgery when she was 2 years old, on one of her hind legs and losing weight from 72lbs to 55lbs in 4 months has helped in living a quality, pain free life.
Lets explore this from a pet — parent perspective and how you can give them quality life.
Kibble
Kibble represents one of the worst of what humanity has to offer. We decided to feed our pets an amalgamation of refined carbs, meat waste, little to no nutrition and bake to high temps stripping everything from it to make it shelf stable. No living being should eat this. While cancer has always existed in dogs, it has become the leading cause of death for senior canines today, 1500–2000 dogs die in a day in the US.
Only recently high quality kibble has come to the market which is an improvement over the regular kibble. This is at least freeze dried and preserves the nutrients. This is still nowhere close to home cooked meals in terms of nutrition and in helping dogs longevity and is also expensive.
Apples initial diet
Now that I have vented out how I feel about kibble, let me explain apples' initial diet and the economics of it.
Veggies(Sweet potato, broccoli, cauliflower, celery sticks, spinach) — $15.83
Costco ground beef 88% lean- @$4.99/lb — $25
White rice — $0.5/cup — $1
Grand total — $41.83 + taxes
This much food lasted 2 weeks and didn't have the best nutrition yet. In spite of that, Apple lost weight and had a lot of energy. She was able to keep up with pups that were 1 year old and was playing for long periods of time without any pain or other issues. The vet was very impressed and asked us to maintain the weight at 55lbs with some additional nutritional supplement.
Perfecting the final recipe
At this point I have experimented with different proteins like pork, lamb, chicken and salmon/cat fish nuggets. I landed with 2 recipes, one with fish which adds less mass but is healthier and the other without fish which adds more mass.
Final recipe and cost:
A total of $69.76 / 3 weeks for a 55lbs dog. On top of this I also add 2 supplements, Bone broth $8.99 which lasts 1 month and 1 x 600g Balance It Canine supplement that costs $85.32 / 6months. So an approx grand total of $85.77 / 3 weeks.
Cost per meal assuming 2 meals a day — $2.04
For me, personally this seems like a small price to pay for the long term health of your pup. I also explored raw meat alternatives but it ended up out of my budget and in general I am not a fan of meal subscriptions and raw meat when not handled carefully can result in bacteria so raw was not an option for me. With the current economy, this might be too expensive for some who want to give the best to their pup and I empathize with that and there is a solution. You can give half good quality kibble and half cooked food, this will reduce the cost by at least 30% and your pup will still get most of the benefits. You can substitute chicken with pork which will reduce the total price.
My point is giving some amount of home cooked food is still better than giving them no home cooked food.
Ground Reality
The reality of the situation is that this is time consuming and there are no two ways about it. I spend almost my entire Sunday from 2pm — 8pm shopping for groceries and finishing cooking and packing. All of this can be thrown in an instant pot left overnight but I have noticed that veggies completely become a mush and Apple always has a loose stool when I do that. It's not a pretty sight. Doing this once every 3 weeks is very taxing and frankly throws a wrench in your plans for the Sunday. In spite of all this, it is very rewarding to see your pup not so patiently waiting for you to finish cooking, and hanging around the kitchen, in your way, begging for a chicken piece here and there. Ultimately, you can see your pup's body changing for the better and maintaining a good weight for her body type. If you are anything like me and take joy in this, I would highly recommend trying it out at least.
Vet Judgement
I obviously can not name our vet, to whom apple has been consistently going since she was 3 years old. He saw her go through this transformation and was very impressed. She is perfectly healthy and every time we visit him, he reiterates how maintaining weight is the best thing for dogs at senior age. The only other recommendation from him was to balance the meal with supplement powder which I started doing. Always consult your vet regarding the diet, they can even recommend dog nutritionists and point towards getting the right recipes for your pup.
Your Loyal Companion
Dogs don't or can't communicate effectively when they are in pain. Only when it reaches to the point where it is unbearable, do they try to communicate. If there is a way to reduce the risk of terminal illness like cancers in your pup, wouldn't you do it?
You as a person have a lot of things in life. For your pup, YOU ARE THEIR LIFE. They adjust to your lifestyle and stay loyal to you. The least we can do is try to make their life less painful and give them a quality life and it always starts with food. For them or even for us.