Dog food help

[Keep_It_Simple]

I have been thinking about the food I give my dogs. They currently gets Iams. Upon doing some research on the internet to compare dog food, one gets the idea that they are all basically crap except for the extremely expensive exotic things that you can't easily get. I know there has to be a better way. I was thinking about taking them off regular dog food and switching to "people food". I know they can't have grapes, raisins, onions, chocolate and sugar is not a great idea. We eat very healthy here and was wondering if anyone out there had any advice. In the "olden days" (when people had more common sense and ran to the store less) they used to feed their animals regular food - table scraps. Any suggestions out there? What do you feed your dogs? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[CarolAnn]

How much time do you have to prepare their food?

Our dogs (40 years or so ago) were fed mostly table scraps and they were fit and healthy.

After my folks retired, mom found a tiny puppy in the middle of a frosty black top - the only survivor of a large litter that had been dumped there. She took her home and fed her with a medicine dropper . . and later that tiny critter grew into a HUGE red hound. I'd go over for a visit and smell the delicious aroma coming from mom's stove . . .only to discover it was Skeeter's dinner, not ours!

Mom saved meaty table scraps, but also put in chopped onion, garlic, carrot, peas, any left over veggies from people meals and any garden produce that was in abundance and made a stew of it all, simmered on low heat. No seasonings, of course, but it smelled great - and Skeeter got that over a cup of cheap Walmart dogfood. The topping was a spoonful of brewer's yeast - (NOT cooking yeast, the edible kind!) because she read somewhere that fleas didn't like to bite anything that had been eating it.

If they had oatmeal for breakfast, that went in. Sometimes she even cooked a little oatmeal to stretch it - but always, she chopped a few fresh veggies for the doggie stew.

Iams is an expensive brand, but I've read it's well balanced and is mostly digested, which is not the case with the very cheap dog foods that have fillers - (and sometimes dangerous fillers!)

If you decide to try cooking up your own dogfood, here are some links to websites that promote home-made food:
http://www.4mydogz.com/RawFeeding.html

This one has some recipes, but it's hard to read, black on dark gray:
http://dog-care.suite101.com/article.cfm/homemade_dog_food_recipes

[bookwormom]

20 years ago I lived around the corner from someone who bred Huskies. at that time you still could go to the slaughterhouse and she went there every mondy and got a tub ful of cow stomachs,some green and some cleaned. she said the green gave the dogs a lot of vitamins that were predigested. The dogs loved it. she also got chicken necks and backs and boiled it with rice, oatmeal and potatoes.