Lordie. The FDA is still going on and on about the chicken jerky dog treats thought to be sickening thousands of pet dogs and cats and to have killed several hundred. If in fact the Chinese-made treats are the cause of whatever ails the beasts, the researchers can’t even figure out what’s in the things that’s making the animals sick.
We used to give Charley and Cassie this particular variety of treats. I think Costco hadn’t marked them as coming from China — after the great melamine flap, I absolutely will not give my dog anything that came from China, and I try to avoid eating Chinese products myself.
Normally I wouldn’t give Cassie treats at all, but with the puppy around the house, I couldn’t give him anything without giving the same to the Queen of the Universe, too. Not and continue living, anyway… 🙄
Cassie gets real food. It’s actually very easy to prepare a balanced diet for a dog, right in your kitchen: combine 1/4 starch, 1/4 vegetables (not corn, not onion, not grapes, not avocadoes), and 1/2 cooked meat, and voilà! You’ve got a healthy, happy dog and you’ve freed yourself from these recurring flaps over the commercial foodoids. The cost is not significantly more than a high-end commercial dog food — and those fancy foods are produced in the same factories with the same ingredients as the cheapest Ole Yaller chow you can find at a discount mart. All of the major brands in all price ranges outsource ingredients to China.
Treats? She likes pieces of inexpensive cheese, bits of apple, carrot, cabbage, pear, melon (dogs love melon), potato, bread…whatever. In the doggy mind, whatever the human is eating must be good. You can give a dog just about anything you eat with the exception of onions, garlic, chocolate, corn, and anything containing caffeine or alcohol, all of which are toxic to canids. Grapes and avocado are also said to disagree with dogs. Refined sugar and heavily salted foodoids are bad for dogs for the same reason they’re bad for you. Otherwise, anything goes.
If you feel your life will be stunted if you can’t give the dog something that looks like cookies, it’s pretty easy to make dog treats. Just google “homemade dog treats” and up will come a bonanza of recipes.
You can feed dogs canned pumpkin (NOT pumpkin pie filling) and green beans also.
Yes, that’s true! Read the label, though: most canned products are full of added salt.
However, you can buy frozen pureed squash, which is unadulterated. Dogs love it. Also, I’ve found they like baked squash and baked sweet potatoes.
Frozen green beans will work, but my microwave arcs when I try to defrost them in there — they contain enough iron to cause arcing, if you can imagine!
Sometimes I cook the ends of asparagus, if they’re not too woody. Once softened up, these work well as dog veggies. I get the good part, though…
Costco sells gigantic bags of mixed veggies that do not contain corn — they call it their “Normandy-style Blend.” You get two kinds of carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower. Defrost and cook until almost soft, run through the food processor to chop, and voila! An endless supply of dog veggies. They’re good for humans to eat, too. 🙂
Gah. Thanks for posting this. I haven’t heard about any recalls for pets. I sent this to all my friends with pets!
“If in fact the Chinese-made treats are the cause of whatever ails the beasts, the researchers can’t even figure out what’s in the things that’s making the animals sick.”
– Don’t treat your dog better than yourself – http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/09/china-chicken-usda/
Oh, yuch! I try to avoid food from China whenever I can…hence the new scheme to eat “less meat but BETTER meat”: seeking out foods from places like Whole Foods that at least make an effort to determine what’s going on at the places where they source meat. Just buying “organic” or “hormone-free” is no guarantee the stuff is not coming from some unregulated Third-World country.
Long time ago I pretty much stopped eating chicken, myself, and the diet clinched it — the chicken you can afford is steeped in salt water so contains a great deal more sodium than any of us should be eating, at least not without knowing what we’re doing. American chicken is chuckablock full of antibiotics (the reason we’re now dealing with bacteria that are resistant to ALL antibiotics — check out the recent Frontline story on that!) as well as sodium. And it tastes terrible!
I do feed it to the dog, because I can’t afford to buy fancy Whole Foods chicken for the dog. Or even, to speak of, for me.
If we start getting large amounts of Chinese chicken in the stores, I guess she’ll be on a diet of pork, which is the only other source of animal protein appropriate for a dog that’s still affordable. She throws up eggs, unfortunately.
This has saved me so much money! I feed my dog homemade treats and simple meat combinations and no longer need to worry about buying the old cans and carrying them home. So much easier, and I bet my corgi is happier too.
It looks like now the FDA is definitely pushing for regulations on food for animals. Sad that it came to this!
Yesh. But I’m afraid out cats and dogs are the canaries in this mine. What we have here is a) sad and b) scary.