Sam is beside himself while waiting to lick the bowl

Today is the day Maureen makes my Healthwise Homemade Raw Food Cakes and I know the routine. It's just excruciating to wait!

When I smell the chicken broth and rice cooking -- yummmm, slurp, drool) and Maureen gets out the cuisinart and a big pile of veggies and the big, big bowl ... then I know pretty soon I get to lick the bowl. And the peanut butter jar. And the poached egg pan.

You might think I'm more handsome and distinguished this way ...

Links:
Maureen's Recipe for Sam's Healthwise Raw Food Cakes
About Sam's Dog Food
Pet Food Recall

Worried about Pet Food? Make Your Own!

Recent news of a recall of major cat and dog food brands made me even more appreciative of the benefits of preparing a homemade raw-food diet for our 18 year old retriever, Sam. If you read the list of brands being recalled, you might wonder if there is any commercially available food for your beloved pets. I bet there will be a run on raw meat, eggs and oatmeal over the next few weeks!

Now I worry about the millions of cats and dogs in families across Canada and the USA, who have been fed the commercial pet foods that were recalled this week. Some pets have died of kidney failure after eating food made by some of the major brands.

Menu Foods, the Ontario, Canada-based company that produced the pet food, said Saturday it was recalling dog food sold throughout North America under 48 brands and cat food sold under 40 brands including Iams, Nutro and Eukanuba. The food was distributed by major retailers such as Wal-Mart, Kroger and Safeway.

The company said it makes pet food for 17 of the top 20 North American retailers. It is also a contract manufacturer for the top branded pet food companies, including Procter & Gamble Co.

Our cat Sadie, died in late January after an acute and very sudden kidney failure. She lived at Tim's woodworking shop -- and was loved by everyone who came in contact with her. We nursed Sadie for a week and finally had to make the decision to euthanize her when it became clear she would not recover. It was really sad -- and we were left wondering how the kidney disease could come on so fast! Now we are suspicious that the food Tim was feeding Sadie, Special Kitty Meat Pouches, was the cause of her sudden disease. Special Kitty is on the list of Cat Food Brands being Recalled this week.

Unfortunately we haven't come up with a recipe for raw cat food that our other cat, Baggins, will eat. He's pretty picky. My mom feeds her cats exclusively a raw food diet that she purchases from my sister, Dr. Moira Drosdevech, a holistic veterinarian in Kelowna, BC. I may just have to redouble my efforts to concoct something Baggins will eat. I don't want him to suffer the same illness Sadie had.

Many of my readers are familiar with my frequent posts about Sam -- our flatcoated retriever who, at 18 years old, has outlived all the other flatcoats I know. We have been feeding Sam variations of a homemade diet for many years. Currently he gets 100% homemade diet. Sam relishes his "Healthwise Raw Food Cakes," and I'm convinced that this homemade organic diet is largely responsible for his longevity.

We were amazed when Sam turned 16 a couple of years ago .... now that he is 18 years old, we consider him kindof a "miracle dog."

Awhile back, I wrote a blog post about homemade dog food, including a list of ingredients I use for Sam's Healthwise Raw Food Cakes. That post also had other notes and recipes for homemade dog treats. Over the years, I have refined my dog food recipe and recorded the amounts I use so I could share it with my readers. The dog and cat food recall has motivated me to write out my recipe today, knowing that thousands of pet owners will be looking for what to feed their pets until the commercial pet food companies can convince us their foods are safe!

Here is my tried-and-true recipe with some photos I took during preparation. This is a document you can print out and use for your own pets. For write me an email for permission to reproduce the recipe for anything other than personal use. Thank you and Enjoy!


List of Dog Food Brands being Recalled
List of Cat Food Brands being Recalled
List of FDA consumer complaint numbers, to report a suspected link between your pet's health and the food you have been feeding.
Google search results for recalled pet food stories

My Recipe again, for Sam's Healthwise Rawfood Cakes

HomeMade Dog Food for Sam

Sam has had some kind of ear problem for most of his life. We have tried everything we could think of to treat and prevent his ear problems. In the last few months, the yeast infection in his ear got so bad he developed a bacterial infection which was resistant to everything we had tried. Finally, our vet, Tia, suggested we take him off of all commercial dog food (we were giving him a combination of commercial organic natural food and my homemade dogfood) Instead we now give him something totally different: a homemade diet of veggies and protein from rabbit, llama, venison or salmon along with some white and brown rice. The food is protein-based rather than grain based. Sam's vet especially suggested we avoid corn, soy, wheat, beef and lamb. Hmmm... we had been feeding him a high quality organic lamb/brown rice food for years.

She also changed the treatment for his ear to one of cleaning the ear flap oogey stuff four times a day with witch hazel (very gentle and non-irritating on the sensitive ear tissues) and applying a custom-mixed cream (an anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, emulsifier and moisturizer all in one) after cleaning the ear. We began using this 4x a day and his ear looks so good we've decreased the treatment to 2x a day. I can hardly believe the difference! We have also completely eliminated wheat, corn, soy, lamb and beef from his diet.

It may take months on his new diet for Sam to show significant signs of improvement, but this venerable, 17-year-old flatcoated retriever seems to be immortal. Tia says, sorta tongue-in-cheek, that he could live for years. Besides, he's worth every bit of extra effort if it makes him more comfortable and happy. So, although I am sure this is not a perfect canine diet, and I will be making adjustments to the food I prepare for Sam, here is what I'm currently feeding him. I freeze most of it in meal-sized, 1-cup balls.

Sam's Veggie Salad aka Sam's Healthwise Rawfood Cakes
(makes enough for one to two weeks for a 70# dog)
3 cups brown rice or barley, cooked (so you end up with about 8 cups cooked barley or rice)
4 to 8 large carrots, chopped finely
1 large zucchini, chopped finely
1 large yam, steamed lightly and mashed
other veggies and fruits as desired **
2 T nutritional yeast
2 T finely ground egg shells
2 T each finely ground flax seeds, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds
2T olive oil
1/4 cup peanut butter

Chop everything (except the rice) in a food grinder til very fine. Then mix by hand and freeze 1 cup balls of the mixture on waxed paper on a cookie sheet. Thaw 2 balls of rice salad each night for two meals a day.

At mealtimes I mix 1 ball of salad, 1 egg, 1/4 cup cottage cheese or yogurt and 4 oz ground raw turkey, chicken or rabbit or raw salmon. Once or twice a week Sam also gets some organ meat (heart, liver, etc) I moisten his food with hot water and sprinkle on some acidophilus.

Dogs like humans, need the proper nutrients to stay healthy. So, to make sure he's getting the minerals, vitamins and other nutrients he needs, each day, Sam also gets dog multi-vitamins, glucosamine and VitC tablets (with peanut butter to make them tastier)
Meats we feed Sam(ground up)
rabbit, turkey, chicken venison, buffalo, liver and heart - not from lamb, pig or cow (contains taurine - we give this once a week)

Veggies we use for Sam's rice-salad mixture (I try to use a variety of veggies to give him good nutrients)
carrots, cabbage, yams, broccoli, kale, chard, peas (with the pod) green beans, winter squash, zucchini, parsley, pumpkin, apples, raspberries, blueberries and cranberries

Sam is a happy dog ... well treated and very healthy! Below, Sam is being weighed by his favorite vet, Tia. Sleeping in the garden where he belongs with Buddha and sharing "his" bed with our cat, Baggins.


There seems to be tons of information online about dog foods. One website I came across that will provide hours of reading in the future, is The Dog Food Project It also seems to be relatively objective about the benefits of feeding dogs either commercial dog food or homemade food. Check out their article on the myths of feeding. I plan to dig deeper into that website as I have time.

The following further information about raw meat/homemade food diet for pets is derived/paraphrased from Pet-grub.com, A Hassle-Free Guide to Wholesome Natural Pet Food, a useful website about natural health for dogs and cats. I found it to have so much information it was a bit overwhelming at first, so I have paraphrased and distilled some of the information pertinent to our dog's diet-for-allergies. I highly recommend if you are interested in changing your pet's diet to raw meat and homemade food, that you read the entire website. There is so much information there, including recipes such as the following for dog biscuits. You can also sign up for Jesse's newsletter by email.

Jesse writes, do NOT use veggies in the nightshade family: potatoes (yams are ok) green peppers, chilis, tomatoes. Also, do not feed your dog or cat onions or garlic.

Supplements on Jesse's list for dogs:

• calcium supplement made with finely ground baked free range egg shells
• probiotic beneficial bacteria such as acidophilous
• pancreatic or vegetable enzyme for digestion
• flax seed meal or sunflower seed meal for essential fatty acids
• Vitamin C from a food source, such as rose hips (Nutribiotics Meta C is made from rose hips) for absorbing calcium, among other benefits of Vt.C
• Dog Treats: (cats like these too)ving Sam salmon oil with each meal.
  

Katherine DeBarnes (Jesse's dog) Favourite Biscuits
rice flour 6 cups
water 6¼ cups
spelt flour 2½ cups (the original recipe calls for corn meal, but Sam is allergic to corn, so I substituted the spelt flour)
oat meal 2½ cups
eggs 2
ground cinnamon 3 TBSP
alfalfa powder 3 TBSP
kelp powder 3 TBSP

In a mixing bowl, mix all the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and then add the water and mix. Add this mixture to the dry ingredients and make into a dough. Roll the dough and cut some biscuits. Place biscuits on a tray and bake for 1 hour at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. I like to roll the dough on cornmeal or bulgur to prevent sticking. I also use this on the cookie tray.

This is a hard biscuit to roll as brown rice has no gluten. As a result you may need some practice to make this biscuit, but on the other paw this biscuit is good for gluten intolerant dogs and because it will break easily, this biscuit is excellent for training purposes.

Jesse's advice about adding warm or hot water to your pet's food:
Feed your pets meats with normal fat content add hot water to the food to volatize the odor, moisten and warm the food, since cold food shuts down the digestive system. All of which helps to recreate and simulate the warmth, moisture, smell, and taste of a fresh kill in the wild, like cats and dogs had before they were domesticated.

Tribute to an old-soul friend of mine

Sam, just hours after his spring, 2005 haircut

I thought I would post some photos of my trusty companion, Sam, who is 16 (human) years old this year (2005) That means he's over 100 in dog years. Definitely a senior, and a right spry senior at that. He still enjoys life, wags his tail, loves walks (although he seems to love the first half of the walk more than the second, going-home half...)

I am going to write some of his story here on my blog. I'll add to it as I have time. It's a remarkable story and Sam has been an incredible old friend for a long time. He's getting really old. We don't know how much longer he'll be with us. But... you never know with anybody, right? I mean, I could die tomorrow. Or tonight. So could he. So could any of us. Life is too precious to let it go by without expressing appreciation.

So here, I am expressing appreciation for a friend who has loved me -- loved Mickey, Gabe, Tim -- unconditionally. No matter what. He beams love to us. He also beams at us: "food, please, just a mere scrap of that thing you're eating."

It seems to me, people usually wait until someone dies to share their feelings about that person, or to share a tribute to that person. Why not do it while your loved ones are still alive?

It's like flowers ... why wait until a funeral to bring flowers? Bring flowers whenever you think about it! While your husband, wife, mother, sister, grandparent, friend .... are still alive, to enjoy the flowers. So, I'm writing this tribute (and it's a work in progress, mind you) about Sam while he's still quite alive -- and kickin.


Sam, on the day of his spring haircut.
He looks younger and older at the same time. Younger because he just isn't covered with all that shag ... and older because you can see how skinny he is and you can see all his lumps and bumps. Signs of age, I guess. sigh.


Sam likes to go with us on our pilgrimages to the river. Here he is with me, his favorite "alpha dog" a couple months ago. Late February, same hike below:


Why fight over the chair, they've just learned to share it.

to be continued......