Paulette Licitra

A dog called Mac opens the refrigerator and helps himself to some cantelope. A local dog trainer holds a "chicken bone restraint class" to encourage dogs who play in the city park to leave their lips off the picnic leftovers. A certain dog who lives at my house leaves his kibble untouched in the dish until the last light is out and everyone asleep. At that point he gives up the hope of real food and eats the kibble. The sound of him in the dark, chomping that dry but ever so nutritionally balanced dish of hard pellets depresses me. This just isn't right. Growing up in the country, our happy dogs ate table scraps, the tips of sweet green grass and pilfered eggs, the greasy bits that fell off the table in the yard where the farmfolk cleaned poultry, game or fish. Of course the dogs themselves hunted for rabbits and other small game. We children fed them sweet green peas from the pod and a squirt from a cows teat. Kibble was the just-in-case food which even in winter was not intended to be their only feed. So it was with pleasure that I ran across the sensible and easy-to-put-together-from-your-own-refrigerator recipes for feeding your dog from scratch that Terry McGinnis included in her second edition of The Well Dog Book. They are foods a dog can live with.

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Feeding Your Dog From Scratch
If you choose not to use commercial dog food and want to feed your dog from scratch, be advised that creating a nutritionally balanced diet is difficult and complex and will require research and consultation with your veterinarian. Below are two nutritionally balanced recipes you can try.

A balanced homemade diet can be mixed with a commercial balanced dry diet to provide a feeding ration halfway between "home cooking" and "store-bought."

WHAT'S ON THE TABLE

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