☋ My Crazy Dog Loves Broccoli!

Healthy Foods! Happy Dogs!

This is the article that got me started on my way to feeding my dog raw food. It took me about an hour to read it. It was written by Pat McKay who has been researching and practicing healthy food programs for dogs and cats. According to their web site, "She has devoted over thirty years researching and completing thousands of case studies where her findings consistently reveal that a raw food program insures maximum health results from her animal clients."

After reading the article by Pat McKay and realizing it's something I could do and should do I bought some extra hamburger and broccoli at the grocery store. I like hamburger, so if by chance the dog didn't like it, I could still eat the rest. I'm not so crazy about broccoli, so that would be a little different. I don't like the smell of brocolli cooking nor the after affects it has on my digestive system. But, I would still eat it if the dog didn't like it. As I'm writing this I'm realizing how backwards this is from my usual thinking - if I make something for dinner and don't like it, I'd give it to the dog.

Pat's book recommends 1 part vegetables to 3 parts meat. I steamed some broccoli until it was soft and then mashed it on my cutting board. I didn't have a food processor at the time, so I just smashed it with my knife. Then I mixed it in with some raw beef and gave it to the dog. She loved it! She licked the entire bowl clean and even some of the outside of the bowl.

I was really happy with that and it encouraged me to continue.

The dog needs to transition to raw food so I wanted to mix a soft boiled egg in with her dry dog food.

I know how to make a hard boiled egg but I can't remember the last time, if ever, I made a soft boiled egg. The goal was to have whites that are slightly hardened and a runny yolk. I checked my old Betty Crocker cookbook and found the instructions.

It was not easy getting that egg out of the shell! It was a mess. Not only that, I had let it cook too long and the yolk was hard. I mixed it in with the dry dog food and gave it to my dog. She liked it, but it was more difficult to eat. I think because it was a mix of hard dry dog food and soft eggs because she would take a few bites and spend time moving it around her mouth before taking another bite. She did finish the whole thing. I was glad she didn't just pick out the parts she wanted and leave the rest behind.

I feel good about our progress. I need to work on my soft-boiled egg technique.

Since starting this raw food program, my dog still gets her two meals a day:

Morning: dry food mixed with one soft-boiled egg
Evening: raw meat and steamed vegetables

I have been reducing the amount of dry dog food and today started using two soft-boiled eggs instead of one. I don't know if I'll end up giving her just eggs for breakfast, but for now (and since I still have the dry dog food) it's a combo meal.

Now to address what's happening on the other end of her body. She is straining when she's having a bowel movement. I think it's because there's too much meat and not enough vegetables. Since I already know the 12 meals didn't get enough vegetables, I will go to the store and buy some more and add some to each one. I don't know if she'll need it mixed in with the meat or if she'll eat it on the side. I'll try on the side first since that's easier for me. I don't know if I'll steam and mash it all at once or if I'll do that each evening.

1. Remove the egg from the refrigerator and let it sit at room temperature for 15 minutes.

2. When the 15 minutes is up, put the egg in a pan of room temperature water. The water should cover the egg by about an inch. The egg might float, so you have to push the egg to the bottom of the pan to see if it's an inch or not.

3. With the uncovered pan on the burner, turn the heat to high.

Note: I'm using an electric stove so your cooking times may be different.

4. When little bubbles form on the egg shell and it looks like it's fizzing (I have found that it takes 6 1/2 to 7 minutes for this to happen on my electric stove), turn the heat off and leave the pan on the burner. Don't let it come to a rolling boil. The bubbles form on the egg shell first. When you see bubbles forming on the pan, that's when it's time to turn the heat off. Leave the pan on the burner.

5. Let the egg sit in the pan for 3 minutes.

6. Remove the egg from the pan and put it in a cup of cold water. This stops the cooking and cools a little so you can touch it.

7. Put a paper towel on the counter and put the egg on the paper towel.

8. Using a long, heavy knife, hit the egg in the middle enough to crack the shell. Rotate the egg and hit it with the knife until it's cracked around the whole thing. The egg shell doesn't cut nice and clean. You'll see multiple cracks in the shell. **I have since found that it's easier to hit the egg a little harder with the knife - enough to make the blade go past the shell about an eighth of an inch.

9. Hold the egg over a bowl and with your thumbs at the cracked shell part, use some force to split the egg in half. The egg yolk should easily fall out leaving you with two halves of an egg with the egg white still inside.

10. Use a spoon to scoop out the egg whites and throw the egg shells away.

A dog's digestive juices take care of salmonella and e-coli. After all, they are carnivores and their natural diet is raw food. (Source: Healthy Foods! Happy Dogs! By Pat McKay)

However, we've domesticated them and given them cooked food because it's easier for us as pet owners. I know this from my own dog. She likes to chase after squirrels even though she's never caught one. At night she likes to hunt down possums. When the hunt is over and she's killed the possum by flopping it back and forth with her teeth, she walks away. She never returns to the dead possum, never tries to eat it, and in fact it looks like she's ignoring it. I don't understand why she won't eat it except that I've trained her to eat dry food out of a bowl.

The danger with feeding my dog raw food is for me and how I handle the meat and utensils. I am not immune to e-coli and have to be extra careful. I make sure to wash everything that has been touched by the raw meat with warm, soapy water. This includes my hands, under my fingernails, bowls, knives and spoons, spatulas, cutting board, and the counter.

My dog eats outside most of the time. After she finishes eating raw food, I bring the bowl back into the house and wash it right away. If I leave it outside it attracts flies which can bite and spread harmful diseases.

Since my dog likes the raw food diet so far, I went ahead and bought enough food for a week. I bought some ground beef, chicken hearts, chicken gizzards, broccoli, and some plastic storage containers. I'm supposed to use chicken meat and organ meats but I couldn't bring myself to spend money on chicken meat that I wouldn't be able to eat myself.

Cost:
$5.07 Ground beef
$1.25 Chicken hearts
$1.38 Chicken gizzards
$1.13 Broccoli crowns

Total: $9.01 (plus $4.28 for 12 Storage containers)

While the broccoli was steaming, I washed the new storage containers. The storage containers are the little rectangular ones by Glade. I used two cookie trays to separate the meat into 12 meals. The ground beef portions ended up being smaller than I wanted because there was more organ meat than ground beef. My sister has let me borrow a small food processor and I used it to mash the broccoli first. Then I cleaned the processor and began mixing the meats.

Proportionally, I had too much organ meat and not enough ground beef or broccolli. Next time, I will buy one package of hearts, 2 crowns of brocolli, one package of ground beef, and one package of chicken thighs. The food processor is small and I can only mix one serving at a time.

What a mess. I was getting used to handling the hearts and gizzards, though as I'm writing this now my face is contorting by the thought of it. My hands were getting slippery from handling the meat fat making and some of the organs weren't getting chopped up like they were supposed to. It took me over an hour to prepare the 12 meals. I put 10 of the containers in the freezer and two in the refrigerator.

My dog was outside during this time period but I invited her in to help me clean up my mess. She licked both cookie trays, the utensils I used, and the food processor bowl. I still had to wash down everything, including the counter and me.

I pulled out one of the pre-mixed meals I had made and set it on the counter for about 15 minutes. I didn't want the food to be really cold. Room temperature might have been better but I didn't want to have raw meat out for that long.

I put the food in her bowl and it sat there in a rectangular blob. I thought about mixing it with a spoon but then decided to just give it to my dog and see what happens.

She loved it! I went to the kitchen to wash my hands and when I returned to the dog, she had finished the entire thing already! The Pat McKay book says to give your dog as much raw food as they can eat - let them walk away when they've reached satiety. Well, I know my dog and I could have given her all 12 meals and she wouldn't have eaten all of it...and then vomited it up. No, I need those meals to last more than one day. Plus, she doesn't get enough exercise to warrant more food.

Very successful day. Happy dog, happy owner.

One reason I started this raw food diet for my dog was to see if it would help relieve her constant scratching. I hoped that with a better diet her skin might improve and not be so itchy. So far, no change in the amount of scratching. However, I don't really know the source of the itch. I haven't seen any fleas on her, but she is outside all day and certainly getting bit by little critters. Also, it's in the 90s during the day and some of this could be caused by the heat.

The most noticeable thing though, is how excited she gets when I feed her, especially the raw food at night. I give it to her between 6pm and 8pm and she just gobbles it up. Her breakfast is similar, as she likes the soft-cooked eggs I've mixed in with her dry food.

I think she likes the sound of the spoon mixing things into her food dish. That alone gets her excited about what surprise awaits her!

I can't honestly say there have been any noticeable changes in my dog's health. Of course, I'm not doing blood tests and can't measure her insides, but from the outside, she seems the same. She still scratches herself alot but I suppose that's to be expected from living outside and getting bitten by various bugs. She didn't have fleas before I started the diet and doesn't have any now.

I do know she LOVES the food I give her. I've shifted the meals so that she gets the raw meat in the morning and the eggs/dry dog food in the evening. The raw meat is chicken thighs and hamburger. I mix in some broccoli and that helps keep her "regular."

One thing that has changed: I can make a perfect soft-boiled egg and get it out of the shell no problem!

Two days ago I bought some more chicken and beef to make the next set of frozen meals. I think the amount I bought will last three weeks.

Dinner time for dogs is a light meal, just like it is for humans. When I first started this meal I used to steam the broccoli a little while to soften it up. I wasn't sure if my dog would like it or not. Turns out she eats it either way so I just give it to her raw.

The eggs are soft-boiled. You can give a dog raw eggs (they aren't susceptible to salmonella like humans are) but I like the way the soft-boiled egg has some bulk to it instead of a runny mess. The dog likes it better that way also. The runny yolk helps hold everything together.

The meal doesn't take all that long to do. The trick is to repeat the same process every time so you can duplicate it with success. For example, I use the same pan and cover, the same burner, and the same amount of water each time I prepare the soft-boiled egg.

The dog loves the process too. She's a quick learner and knows that when I pull the egg carton out of the refrigerator, something tasty and healthy food is on the way.