Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Left Out

Hansel spent a couple hours at my place today. The poor guy had to watch Winnie while she ate her dinner. He's fed a decent kibble, actually- one of the Natura brands (either Innova or California Natural, I can't remember)- but of course, nothing beats a good ol' raw diet.

Since his mom's a vet student she gets free food from the Natura company :) (Thankfully she hasn't been brainwashed by Hill's Science Diet, whew!)


In the beginning I had to gently block him with my arm so that he wouldn't get close (remember, he has that habit of stealing other dogs' things?). Winnie doesn't resource-guard but I knew she would've run away with the food in her mouth, and I didn't want a raw-food-chase all over the apartment.


Eventually I trusted Hansel to keep his distance himself. He wouldn't take his eyes off Winnie's turkey neck- he kept doing circles around her towel, LOL.


After Winnie finished her meal I allowed him to sniff and lick the meat towel (shh, don't tell his mom!).


Too bad Hansel isn't fed raw, I'm sure he would enjoy it to no end!


In other news, this past Saturday I made my first homemade meal ever- lasagna!. It turned out quite well. Next time I think I'll replace half the ricotta cheese with cottage cheese and half the ground beef with Italian sausage. And more sauce as well.


I have some blueberry cobbler in my crockpot right now. Fingers crossed that it turns out nicely! It'll be my first slow-cooked meal (er..dessert) in my new crockpot. I think I'm getting the hang of this cooking thing!

In the meantime, I'll be eating lasagna for the next 1-2 weeks. LOL!

3 comments:

betty said...

yummers with the lasagna and the blueberry cobbler. I never made any desserts in my crockpot but I hear people have had success with them.

too cute with Hansel watching Winnie eat; Koda would have found a way to worm his way to where the food was

horrors, I should be more up on this, but we feed Koda Hills Science Diet....I'm assuming it isn't the best choice for him???

betty

Esther said...

Hi Betty!

Let's just say that there are better dog food choices than Science Diet :) If you take a look at the ingredients you can see that they are NOT something that dogs should be eating- corn, by-products, and not-so-good additives. You can check out www.dogfoodproject.com for more details on feeding a better-quality food! :)

-Esther

Unknown said...

I agree with Esther - and not just because Honey is raw-fed as well. I always tell people that I understand raw feeding isn't for everyone and a lot of dogs do very well on kibble but it has to be a GOOD QUALITY kibble and this isn't determined by the flashy marketing campaign or size of the company but by the list of ingredients you see at the back.

Meat should be the first (and therefore main) ingredient (ie. dried forms) - but not the "chicken byproducts" that you see on most big dog food labels - that's just a fancy way of saying feathers and beak and legs...nothing of great nutritional value. Also, lower quality kibble has much more grains/carbs to bulk up the food - so cheaper to produce and better profits. Too much grain leads to intolerance and sloppy, smelly poos, etc. So even if feeding kibble, look for one with high proportion of meat in ingredients, good, quality, non-allergenic grain sources (eg, brown rice), few/no additives...very hard to find!!

Feeding raw, fresh food as nature intended and as we would eat ourselves for best health is a lot easier than trying to recreate the same good equation with factory-made processed stuff!

But yes, Hills would be very low on my list...big name, "endorsed" by vets (who all sell it in their clinics...hmm, conflict of interest there?) but look past the marketing and really look at the ingredients.

Hsin-Yi