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Healthy Food — Healthy Pets

How Is Natural Homemade Pet Food Made — With Love

Dogs and cats deserve a wholesome raw meat diet

More Thoughts on Feeding Natural Homemade Pet Food

  • It has been my experience that puppies and kittens will tell you when to remove a meal from their daily intake because they simply won't want to eat as many meals.
  • After your puppy or kitten has eaten its food, it doesn't hurt to massage their stomach. This helps to get the digestive system working and to help with elimination. This helps to simulate the licking and massaging that their mother would naturally do.
  • Once your dog or cat has finished eating, put any uneaten food into the meat container, store in the fridge and feed the next day.
    • I suggest putting the uneaten foods in a separate container so that the uneaten foods don't taste food that has not been served yet.
  • Try not to combine meats, but at the same time do not waste food. In other words, if you're feeding beef today and most of it goes and tomorrow you want to feed lamb, then feed the lamb and add the remaining beef to the lamb. Just try to minimize this, that's all.
  • If your dog or cat does not immediately go for the food, read the page about encouragement.
  • Don't leave the food on the floor forever. You want to get your pet into a routine so that all the food is eaten within 10 to 15 minutes of placing the food on the floor. Once again, if you are having problems with this, read the page on encouragement, but at the same time, make sure your companion eats food (even if this means you need to feed some commercial pet food with wholesome homemade food to get them to eat).
  • If you have rescued a puppy, kitten, dog or cat, then you may notice that it needs extra feedings each day as its body has been starving for a while. Once its body is fully satiated with nutrition, then you will find they will go onto a more normal eating schedule for their age. Watch and respond.

  • This program will only takes minutes a day once organized.
  • Now, just maintain your food supply. For example, prepare some veggies or meat as needed. That's it!

Grains:

In the past, many homemade foods have contained grains. However, leading animal nutritionists and holistic veterinarians are no longer suggesting that grains be used.

It is suggested that with grains removed, pets (including my own) eat significantly less food over a period of time (the food intake can drop by as much as ½ or more) and in general, many pets do a lot better without grains.

Holistic vets and animal nutritionists are saying that our carnivore friends can obtain all of the nutrients found within grains from the combination of meats and vegetables.

Grains are not naturally eaten by carnivores and grains are extremely hard on a carnivore's digestive system.

Believe it or not, but carnivores do better on a diet that consists of little to no fiber.

By not feeding grains you remove properties like gluten from our pet's foods. Gluten, along with other properties of grains may be a factor in hidden allergies our pets are suffering from and grains may also be a factor in problems like candida.

I do not suggest or recommend the feeding of grains for a few reasons:

  1. Grains are not needed and your pet's health will generally improve without grains.
  2. I'm lazy and grains need to be cooked. By not feeding grains, you will increase the speed, efficiency and ease of feeding a natural diet.
  3. It is common knowledge that good food combining means that grains and animal proteins should not be eaten together. When grains are fed with an animal protein, the result is poor digestion. This might be the reason why pets who do not eat grains generally eat less food than those pets who do eat grains. As digestion improves, the body is able to extract more nutrition from less food. This ultimately means the body requires less food to get more nutrition. Once the body gets enough nutrition, it stops eating.
  4. As mentioned, our carnivore friends are designed to eat a low fiber diet. By adding grains you also add fiber. Ironically to help prevent constipation in dogs and cats we want to feed a low fiber natural raw meat diet that uses wholesome foods. A wholesome raw meat diet then helps to bring moisture to the bowels which is one of the keys to preventing constipation. Remember, when we feed a wholesome raw meat diet, the raw meat contains moisture (as described on the page about preparing meat). Many humans who suffer from constipation eat lots of fiber and yet still experience constipation because they do not drink enough water. Water is crucial to good health and so pets eating dry commercial pet food as well as cooked meats meals are more likely to suffer from constipation related health problems which include, but are not limited to, constipation itself, hair balls, colitis, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), diverticulitis and more.
  5. The only reason why grains are added to commercial pet foods is because they are a cheap ingredient, not because they are actually beneficial.

Let's keep it simple and let's keep our pets healthy by not feeding grains.

Relax

One of the keys to feeding our pets a wholesome homemade diet is that we must not only feed them when our pets are relaxed, but we are relaxed too. Your energy can and does affect the behaviour of your pets. If you feed with positive energy, your pets eat with positive energy. The following page talks about distractions followed by how to encourage pets that are reacting to stubborn humans.

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Testimonials

What Others Have Said

To submit your testimonial, just send me .

The following are testimonials shown in random order. In addition to reading these testimonials, you may also want to read The Sick Pet Project.

Read more testimonials.

Thanks Again Jesse!

2005-07-30

My 12 year old male cat, Lynx, was diagnosed with F.I.V., and feline AIDS several years ago. I used to spend a lot of time worrying and money on veterinary bills. When a friend of mine suggested raw foods, I thought it was a terrific idea. It made perfect sense to feed animals that are domesticated a more natural diet. So I immediately started Lynx on the program. Within weeks I started to notice differences in his looks, his energy, and even his temperament. Even my friends noticed the difference in him and want to know my secret. I always tell them about you. Thanks again Jesse for your advice, encouragement, and excellent service.

– Mrs. Anderson

Enjoying Your Method

2011-06-06

Thanks so much. I'm so enjoying making pet food via your method. It's just a breeze now and of course they are all happy. Especially the cats. The cats have always loved the raw diet though. It's night and day over feeding commercial food. I cannot think of one person that feeds commercial cat food that doesn't put up with the indifference that cats display. Having fed commercial for years, I can remember going through different types trying to find something that they wouldn't turn up their nose at. Now, I kid you not, you could get trampled feeding this crew.

– Rose

In Just 6 Days

2010-06-10

Here’s our story.

We have 2 rescue Chihuahuas, one is a mix, we believe, with Jack Russell Terrier. His name is Lucky and he is approximately 8 years old. We rescued him 3 years ago. Our other little guy is Chico and he is about 2-3 years old. We rescued him November, 2008 and they said he was 2 but we think he was younger, just looked older and acted older because he was undernourished. We have been feeding NutroMax and Iams dog foods, which we believed were on the better side of commercial grade pet food.

Lucky has lost some teeth and recently developed allergies with wheezing and coughing. The vet gave us 2 medicines for him to give twice a day. On Saturday, May 29, 2010, he came to his breakfast, sniffed the food, shook and shuddered and walked away. I thought that was weird!, but when he gets hungry he will eat. Saturday night he did the same thing and also Sunday morning. By now my husband, Robert, and I are getting a little concerned. Lucky is a little chunky, but not obese, so missing a few meals probably wouldn’t hurt him as long as he was drinking his water, which he was. Well I tried giving him the canned food, which he ate for a couple of meals and then did the same thing as he did with the dry. Sniffed, shuddered and walked away. Well, for a week I tried several things, canned chicken, cut up chicken (sautéed) and then on Friday, June 4, 2010, I started searching the internet for homemade pet food. Praise the Lord! I found your website. I immediately switched both dogs to raw food on Saturday morning. I happened to have thawed a chicken breast, cut it into small pieces and they both chowed down!

Saturday I bought some ground meat, turkey and some beef (lean), and have been feeding them both raw meat mixed with some chopped frozen veggies ever since. The immediate improvement (within 6 days) in both dogs has been just short of miraculous. Lucky is not wheezing and is back to his old bouncy self. He gets the bounce from the Jack Russell side of his family. He hasn’t had his meds since he quit eating because we thought they might have been part of the problem. Chico is more relaxed and not as fearful, which is a strange benefit, but I’m loving it. We believe he was quite abused in his former life and even after being with us for 1-1/2 years still acted fearful. Both their coats are smoother already and their bowel movements are much better, still firm, but not hard. Believe it or not they are even getting along better with each other. I guess just generally feeling better overall.

I am so excited about their new diet, oops, new life style change, and am telling everyone about it and giving them your web site info and a copy of the condensed version of your book.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for being there when we needed you.

God bless you and keep up the good work taking care of His creation that give us so much love. And isn’t love the key to everything?

– Hazel