Dog Food Recipes: Cooking Guide for Dog Lovers

Nutrition is of utmost importance for the health and wellbeing of dogs. There are a lot of quality dog food brands, and typically each brand offers various food types selected for different dog breeds, age, special health conditions and so on.

However, despite of the huge choice of foods, many experienced dog breeders suggest that homemade dog food may be the best choice for your dog.

Preparing quality dog food at home is not difficult at all - you need to find some dog food recipes and allocate a few hours of your spare time.

You can find recipes on the internet, pet magazines and books, adapt your everyday cooking recipes to suit your pet or even create recipes of your own.

Whichever way you decide to go, you must keep in mind that there are certain ingredients that are absolutely forbidden for dogs – sugar, cocoa, salt, spices, some fruits (grapes, avocado, raisins), vegetables (onions, garlic, cooked potatoes), nuts (walnuts), yeast dough, bread, alcohol, coffee, tea, artificial aromas, sweeteners and food coloring.

It is recommended that you double check the dog food recipes you intend to use prior to cooking and feeding your dog.

Another thing to consider is that every dog breed has specific nutritional necessities which also change with each phase of dogs’ life. Not all recipes you may come across will be suitable for the breed or the age of your pet, its lifestyle and health condition.

Make sure the dog food recipes you intend to use can be made of natural ingredients, will provide enough nutritional value and adequate amounts of vitamins and minerals.

In general, a well balanced dog meal is considered one that contains meat, eggs or dairy products as well as grains and vegetables. Dogs are not pure carnivorous so the amount of grains and vegetables can consist ¾ of the meal.

Taste is one of the last things to worry about – sometimes homemade dog food has a pretty weird taste to people but tastes great to dogs.

Here are a few suggestions of how you can easily adapt or convert human food recipes into tasty and nutritious dog food recipes:

• Soups. Soups are one of the easiest meals that you can prepare for your dog. What you need to do is to prepare the soup the same way you would do it for your family but remove some of the ingredients that you will normally use and substitute them with others. Skip adding salt and spices, onions and/or garlic, if you intend to use potatoes, substitute them with rice. In case you are cooking a meat soup, use boneless meat.
• Main courses. Most dogs enjoy eating and would eat pretty much everything you feed them. This is excellent news because it gives you the freedom to transform almost every main dish you cook into a delicious dog meal. All you will have to do is to avoid forbidden ingredients and substitute them with ingredients suitable for dogs. Vegetarian meals are good too as long as your dog likes eating vegetables.
• Treats and deserts. One of the major differences between dog and human nutrition is the fact that dogs cannot eat sugar. For that reason transforming treats and desert recipes must be done with great care. In essence, you must exclude sugar, cocoa, chocolate, alcohol, yeast and artificial coloring.

Cooking for your dog can be fun and gives you the opportunity to maintain a healthy diet and provide your little pal with high-quality nutrition.

Using food recipes created specifically for dogs or adapting some of your everyday meals, you can prepare a large variety of excellent gourmet meals and treats your dog will love.

To read and understand more information about Dog food recipes, check out the highly recommended Dog Food eBook and audio package today!