Our princess dog, Danica, stopped eating food for about two weeks till we finally figured out that the reason she had stopped was because she no longer liked the wet food we were putting into her bowl in the morning. We do a half wet/half dry mixture in the morning and all dry in the afternoon but because she wasn’t finishing the wet in the morning, we were just mixing in more dry in the evening and she would only eat about half of that too. She was only getting about a cup of food total a day.
Because Ben and I are pretty particular about the food we’ll give the pets I decided to try my hand at making it myself rather than do a ton of research on different brands of foods and hoping that our picky dog would eat. After reading a bit online it seemed that all the recipes were really similar and most sites gave the same basic directions for slow cooker food. The last site I ended up reading said “You know what your dog likes, just use that and you’ll be good” so that’s what I’ve been doing.
General directions are easy: put food in slow cooker, cook for a lot of time, stir, serve. Where a lot of people differ is the ingredients. Just make sure before you start that you read up on anything you want to add to make sure that it’s safe for dogs. Apples, for instance, are loved by a lot of dogs but the seeds can be dangerous so make sure to core them and remove any seeds first. For a great list of foods that are and are not safe for dogs go here.
Here was the recipe I used the first time:
1.2 LB Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts or Tenders
20 OZ Ground Turkey
2 Apples (cored and deseeded)
1/2 a 2 LB bag of carrots
1/2 a 2 LB bag of frozen peas
1 cup brown rice
It netted about 16 cups of food. This time I took pictures of the process to show you how simple it really is. I changed up the recipe a bit to see how Princess Pick Eater would do with it and she’s eating it fine but I forgot the rice so it made less food. Also, I think that I’ll probably drop the turkey next time and use all chicken. EXPERIMENT! It’s SO EASY to make and your dogs will LOVE IT and you will have total control over the kind of food they’re eating.
So here are the basic steps:
1) Gather all your ingredients (don’t forget the brown rice LIKE A FOOL ;)):
2) Throw the meat in there! Whatever your dogs like! Danica once stole an entire roasted chicken off the counter and ate half of it in less than two minutes. On another occasion she stole an ENTIRE PACKAGE of frozen turkey off the counter and ate it. Pretty sure the American Government could have bottled up the farts that occurred after that to use for the most harsh form of chemical warfare.
3) Add the veggies! Kumo LOVES carrots. We actually use them for training with him. He also LOVES apples but this time we were running low on them so instead I added two large sweet potatoes. I also add peas for a touch of color and because they are good for you!
4) Add enough water to cover the meat. I added a little more that than here and it was a bit too much, I had to remove some when it was done cooking.
5) Turn the slow cooker on low and walk away. This batch cooked for nine hours overnight while we slept and I finished it up in the morning. You will be tempted to stir it or smell it or gaze longingly at it but don’t. Just leave it alone and let it be.
6) When it’s done cooking (I wouldn’t go less than 6 hours) turn the cooker off and start to stir the food. The meat will just fall apart as you stir. Mash the veggies into it a bit while you stir. Try to avoid the temptation to taste it. It isn’t bad but with no seasoning it’s kind of bland. Ben said it smelled and looked like chicken pot pie filling. The dogs will be somewhere near you drooling, try not to slip on it. (Since I forgot the rice there was a bit too much liquid here and I had to skim some off the top so don’t be like me and forget the rice!)
7) FINISHED! We throw it into a Tupperware container and dish it out every morning for breakfast. Our dogs get a cup each so we use it all up before it goes bad but if your dogs eat less then you can freeze what you don’t need right away and pull it out as you need it.
