Cooking Your Dog Food

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 talking about how to make your own dog food. Right now, we are getting right at to add all the ingredients that we've put together today into the dog food and get it all prepared and ready for your dog. So the first thing we are going to add is some water. You want to add about five cups of water. We've already added about three, so we've just got another two cups to go. When you are adding water to your dog's food you want to make sure that you are using filtered water just like you would drink; because it's going to have a better ingredient for your dog. So the next thing we are going to add into your dog's food are some grains. What we are going to do, we have about two cups of oatmeal here, we are going to add this in. That's is going to be a little bit less than you would normally use to cook with five cups of water, but you want to make basically a stew and we are going to cook everything together when you are cooking your dog's food. So we are just going to add the two cups of grains and then we are going to take the fruits and vegetables that we cut up earlier. Again, we have apples, sweet potatoes and collard greens that we are going to add in today. This is going to comprise about 30% to 50% of your dog's food today. So we've got about a cup each of these ingredients. So we are just going to add these into the pot and then we are going to just go ahead and turn it on and bring it to a boil. Well, now we've brought this to a boil and we are going to go ahead and add the meat and the basic ingredients that we discussed earlier. So we are using turkey today. I have got about a pound of turkey here that we are going to add into your dog's food. You want to use about 10% to 30% of your dog's diet to be a meat or a protein of some sort. So the turkey is going to work out really well here for us. We are just going to mix it in, break it up a little bit, so that it mixes up nicely and then we are going to add the basic ingredients that we talked about earlier. Again this is kelp, bone meal, our British yeast and some apple cider vinegar. So we are just going to go ahead and throw this in here and mix it up real nice with the food that we have got boiling here; and we are just going to let this cook this for about 10 minutes. Just see that the meat is cooked through. You don't want to cook it too much because you don't want to cook the nutrients out of it. The more you cook food the more you cook the nutrients out of the food. So we are just going to let this cook for about five to ten minutes. We are going to leave it on low, just let it simmer, boil a little bit and stir every once in a while, just to make sure that nothing is sticking and that it's all mixed up real nicely for your dog. Over here, we actually have some food that's completely cooked. Again you will notice that it has sort of the consistency of a stew, which is really nice. It's a good thick diet, but it's got lots of liquids in it for your dog. You are going to serve about a cup of this to your dog and we are going to talk about how to serve it up next.