Basic Dog Food Ingredients

Krista Heinz: Hi! My name is Krista Heinz and I am the owner of Doggie Style Bakery Boutique and Pet Spa in Dupont Circle and today, we are here to talk about how to make your own dog food. We are going to talk right now about the basic ingredients that you need to get started with making your own dog food. What you are going to find is that dogs have some nutritional needs than people do and these are just some basic ingredients that you are going to want to use to make sure that you fulfill all their nutritional needs when you are making their food. So we have some ingredients here. One is apple cider vinegar, one is wheat germ, we have got some kelp, British yeast and salmon oil. I actually have wild Alaskan salmon oil; when you are looking for ingredients, when you are making your own dog food, you are going to want to look for ingredients that are really high in nutritional value. These are organic, all-natural foods. Things like wild Alaskan salmon oil and it's something that has a really good nutritional value to it. So just like when we are looking for food for ourselves, you are going to want to look for food for your dog that is high in nutritional value. So we will just get started measuring out the ingredients. We want to just take a tablespoon of the raw wheat germ, a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar. Apple cider vinegar is actually, really good to control gas in dogs. So we are just going to take a tablespoon of that. The kelp, this is great for your dog's skin and coat; so if your dog has any problem with their skin or coat, this is something that is really nice to add to their food and if you find once you start making your own dog's food that your dog's skin is still a little bit dry, you can always add a little bit more; but today we are just going to add a tablespoon. The British yeast is another ingredient that we will add. It's really high in Vitamin B and it's really helpful in controlling fleas and ticks. So during the summer, you may want to add a little bit more of this also; but today again, we are just going to add a tablespoon to the food. Our next ingredient is bone meal and that is right here. I actually grounded some of it my coffee grinder; it's made with eggshells. It's a really cheap and inexpensive way to get your bone meal, is to take your eggs from breakfast and throw them into the coffee grinder and grind them up for your dogs; but you can also buy bone meal at any health food store. So we are just going to take a teaspoon here of the bone meal and add that to your food and the last ingredient we have here is the salmon oil, which we are actually going to wait until the end to add the salmon oil. Salmon oil will break down when it's heated. So to add it into the dog food at the beginning is just going to nullify it's effect; so that is it. These are the basic ingredients.

Next, we are going to talk about the vegetables that you can incorporate into your dog's food.