Thursday 17 September 2015

Frugal dog food and Charlie

Our little poodle Charlie, is getting on a bit.  He's getting on a lot actually.  In the 8 or 9 years we've had him since finding him abandoned, with over-grown fur full of fleas, and an aversion to men with stick shaped things in their hands, he has calmed right down and become such a sweetie and much loved member of the family.  Well, I love him, even though the cats seem to cast their spooky spell over the rest of the family...I digress.






Charlie has always been a bit scratchy, a bit inflamed on the ears and feet, and I realised early on that it was probably the dog food I was giving him.  The vet agreed with me, but no matter what, Charlie would not eat the very-expensive-but-good-for-him dry food although he would quite happily scrump the cats' dry biscuit food.

So, after much consultation with vet/internet, I devised my own food for him: 40% chicken, 20% veg such as carrots/beans/peas and 40% rice and couscous, with a couple of spoons of powered eggshell for extra calcium, and he also gets a bit of sardine or mackerel when we have some for lunch.  Sometimes I chuck on a couple of little biscuity things too, just for a bit of a change.



About once a month, I boil up chicken legs in the pressure cooker until the bones soften, pick off all the meat, add the veg, rice etc, and measure it out into foil containers - 180 grams a go - and then into the freezer.  It costs me about a frugal 25 to 30 centimes a day, which can't be bad.  I love doing it for Charlie because I love him, and he doesn't scratch his skin anymore.

Win-win!

Well, it would be win-win, but he has suddenly got bored with his food and has started scrumping the cats' dry stuff again.  Sigh...

2 comments:

  1. Its great that you do your dogs meals, they look really tasty, have you tried making dog treats for him at all, I did some for Sol out of liver he loved them :-)

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  2. Dawn, that does sound good - how do you make them? My dear old MIL used to put little bits of gravy soaked bread in the oven to dry out as dog treats, but charlie doesn't seem that keen.

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