Recently in Cragar Category

It's been a little over a month since I've last written, and we've been busy with all sorts of things. The biggest project we've taken on recently has been re-roofing the house. I'm sure I'll post a later entry with all the gory details, but for now I'm enjoying the fact that we have a new, leak-free roof over our heads.

The other thing that's been consuming a bit of my time is doing further reading on home-cooking for Cragar. Since I was initially fuzzy on supplementing Cragar's diet with vitamins, calcium and other minerals, I decided I needed extra help. I ordered Dr. Pitcairn's Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs & Cats - a excellent resource for home cooking for pets. I read the section on diet and nutrition several times to make sure I understood before venturing into the unknown depths of a health food store (I think I've been in a health food store maybe twice in my life). Who would have thought that I'd be buying kelp powder to make a nutritional supplement for my dog? And on the subject of the powdered kelp, I realize that it contains iodine and other minerals, but as far as I'm concerned it should be called powdered ass, it smells so bad. Whew! I thought for sure Cragar would spit his food on the floor after I added the supplements to his food, but apparently he likes powdered ass.

The book has several recipes and ingredient substitutions. I can make the "Doggie Oats" recipe a bunch of different ways - substituting barley, rice, bulgur, potatoes, or cornmeal. I can use turkey, hamburger, chicken, or even cottage cheese and eggs! There are so many variations!

Two weeks ago I made a weeks' worth of food with the oats and hamburger. Cragar loved it! I cooked the oats while I was browning hamburger, then steamed some carrots and green beans and mixed it all together. The oats made it all look like a gummy mess, but apparently Cragar likes gummy messes, too! Then I made the mini recipe with beef and barley, and one with chicken and brown rice.

I think there's more dog food than people food in my freezer right now.

The regular doggie oats recipe makes a lot of food. I wanted to make sure Cragar was going to be getting nutritional variety (and flavor variety), so I've recently been making the Mini Doggie Oats recipe two different ways. Different meats, grains, and veggies in each. Unfortunately, dietary variety means more time in the kitchen. Usually it was taking 2.5-3 hours from pulling the first pan out of the cabinet to putting the last little freezer bag full of food in the freezer (including all the cleanup). That's quite a chunk of time.

But then I was browsing the Dogster forums and I saw it right there: CROCK. POT.

How could I not have thought of this before? I can cook it all in a crockpot! Throw in the 1 part barley, rice, bulgur, or cornmeal to 2 parts water (or if using oats, use steel cut oats!, then 1 part oats to 3 parts water), raw meat, veggies, cover it up, turn it on, go do something else, come back 8 hours later and voila! What a genius idea. I don't know who thought of it to begin with, but cheers to you!

So the new routine is, add all the food (and appropriate water) to the crockpot and cook it up. After everything cooled down I add the extra bone meal the recipe calls for and the Vitamin E (mixed in with vegetable oil), and mix it all up. I did a little math on the recipe (which calls for Healthy Powder - the stuff that has the powdered ass kelp, lecithin, nutritional yeast, bone meal), and figured out that instead of adding the powder to the whole recipe, I can add just less than a teaspoon to each cup of food I feed him. That way I can add it fresh each time.

With learning all this nutritional stuff, I feel like I'm back in college! Heck, I even created a spreadsheet, based on the Doggie Oats recipe, where I can enter the amount of meat I have (i.e., 2 packages of ground beef totaling 2.25 pounds), and the other ingredients will be calculated automatically, even taking grain substitutions into account!

I'm such a geek.

But I think in the long run, Cragar will benefit immensely from it. He's already got brighter eyes, softer and shinier fur, and more energy than he's had in a long long time.

Now if only some of that would rub off onto me!

Again it's been a long long time since I've made an entry here, but it always seems like there's too much stuff to do and precious little time to actually do it.

One thing that's been in the forefront of my mind in the last several weeks has been the pet food recall. From the contaminated wheat gluten to the contaminated rice and corn, it has just turned into a complete and total nightmare for pet owners. I can't imagine someone feeding their dog (or cat) something that is slowly killing them.

When the initial list of recalled foods came out, I (like many others) frantically scanned it just to make sure it was nothing we were feeding Cragar. I was worried because at that point, it was only "Cuts & Gravy" type foods, which happens to be all Cragar would eat. From the time he was very young, he turned his little puppy nose up at dry food. Even if we'd mix some kibble in with his wet food, he'd spit the kibble on the floor and eat only the wet food. From time to time, he'd even refuse wet "gravy" type food.

Luckily none of the food Cragar eats was on any of the lists. He was eating Pedigree pouches - mainly Butcher's Stew and Casserole Dinner - in addition to Little Ceasar's trays. He really liked those, and the flavors like Duck and Pork Tenderloin really drove him wild.

As the list kept expanding, I stopped giving him dog treats. Although there were no treats on the list (besides an entry for Jerky Strips), some of his favorites were the Nutriplan biscuits (what can I say, apparently he loved cheap treats!). Nutriplan food was on the recall list, and I wasn't going to take the chance that the contaminated materials didn't reach those, too.

Then, in true form, I became more paranoid. When was the food he was eating going to pop up on one of those lists? It didn't help at the time for some reason he was puking and had diarrhea. Coincidence, I'm sure, but that was the last straw. I said the hell with the dog food.

I boiled several chicken breasts and shredded them, then added some rice. When I ran out of chicken breasts, I browned some hamburger and mixed it with rice. Then of course the logical part of my brain started working (it doesn't always work, you know), and I realized that when I open a can of food, I can at least ensure he's getting proper nutrition. So my new mission was, how can I provide proper nutrition without using dog food?

A lot of non-pet owners would most likely call me crazy... for eons dogs have survived without a nutritionally balanced diet. They ate scraps, animal carcasses, whatever they needed to to survive. Ok, so I may be a little compulsive. But I'd venture a guess other pet owners would understand. I'd like to provide Cragar with the nutritional equivalent of opening a can, sans melamine.

So I started doing a little bit of research and quickly got way in over my head. I headed over to the great Globalpaw forums, where not only is there tons of information on the recalls, but a lot of other people who are starting to home cook for their dogs. I got some great advice, (Calgal, especially, thank you!) and I'm now feeding Cragar some pretty yummy, healthy food. It cost a total of about $9 to make, and it will feed him for about 8 days. It actually works out to be less expensive than feeding him Pedigree or Little Ceasar's trays!

My initial experiment was a recipe that Calgal provided, including natural hormone-free beef, brown rice, split peas, lentils, broccoli, carrots, and garlic. I was very tentative about the recipe since Cragar has been know to be picky (just in case you forgot about the whole spitting-the-kibble-on-the-floor routine, he's also been known to turn his nose at french fries, hamburgers, and other things "normal" dogs would do backflips for). I took a little bit of each ingredient (so I wouldn't have to waste 3 pounds of meat if he didn't like it), mixed it and gave it to him. After walking around the dish several times and lots of sniffing, he took a tentative bite. Then he started woofing (no pun intended) it down like he hadn't eaten in a week. When he was done he licked his chops, burped, then looked at me with those eyes that say, "May I have more please?"

So now feeding time is fun! I have the beef mixture in little freezer bags that I pull out every night and defrost in the fridge. When I put it in his bowl I usually stick it in the microwave for about 15 seconds so it won't be cold. Now, when he hears the microwave, he starts dancing around my feet or sitting by his food stand watching me intently. One time he almost had his face in the bowl before I even put it down! He's never been so enthusiastic about eating before.

Yesterday I mixed some plain yogurt into the food for his dinner - I thought he was going to eat his bowl after it was empty. He had yogurt once - on his first birthday I made him a puppy birthday cake and "iced" it with yogurt.

One thing I'm still a bit fuzzy on is supplements. Most people who home cook for their dogs add supplements like Flax seed, vitamins, crushed eggshells, etc. I may be a chemist, but when I start to get into all the supplements, I get a little worried. Body chemistry can be a delicate thing, and I don't want to screw it up. That's what was so good about using dog food (gross as it is).

A guy I work with uses Chicken Soup For The Puppy Lovers' Soul - an all natural food with a good reputation. He brought some into work today for Cragar to try. I added some to his beef mixture tonight and added some cottage cheese and blueberries (thanks again, Calgal, you rock!). He ate every. Single. Bite. So I'm considering "supplementing" the home cooking with good quality kibble like the Chicken Soup or Innova to make sure he's really getting everything he needs.

And tonight I had quite a revelation - Cragar is actually eating better and healthier than we are!

Back when Cragar was about a year old, I took this photo of Dave holding him. I thought it was hilarious for some strange reason, and because of his bodybuilder style pose in this photo, Cragar got the nickname Arnold Schwarzenauzer. It still makes me giggle helplessly when I see it.

So, in honor of my dear Arnold Schwarzenauzer, I'm featuring a new design inspired by this very photo. If you're schnauzer is a bodybuilder in training or just needs a new shirt for his next workout, come to the puppytoes.net store and check it out!