Geniuses and Q&A
And we launched Pup Packets!
Some people troll on the internet for a reaction while others take their job as keyboard warrior extremely seriously. It’s all just noise at the end of the day. There are comments that warm our heart and others that make us laugh. There are also a number of great questions in the comment section that we feel compelled to answer. This post is our best effort to cover these. We will let you guess which one is which. Before that here are a few posts you may have missed, AND a FREE budget balanced recipe below, because feeding your pup well doesn’t need to be expensive.
Also a bit of news. We launched Pup Packets in order to make home made food even more accessible. A small dog can eat the freshest food possible for as little as $2 dollars a day. Like always, our mixes contain no preservatives, no synthetics vitamins, and no animal byproducts—just whole foods. Now on to the comments!
“This food does not look tasty”
While some people (who can’t read) believe that we feed the dogs alcohol, chocolate, or overly rich food, this commenter has gone the opposite direction. It’s true that we go light on aromatics in most of our doggified recipes because dogs’ sense of smell is so much more acute than ours. They are particularly sensitive to flavors and spices.
Plus, since dogs don’t sweat like people do, their need for salt is much lower than ours. We only add extra salt in our growth (puppy) and reproductive recipes (We have a whole section on this in The Dog’s Table). Dogs have higher requirements for some things like zinc, copper and vitamin D for example. It’s for this reason that they find offal (organs like liver, kidney, etc) delicious while most people usually cringe at the idea of eating liver. Despite it looking random to the untrained eye, our recipes are based on highly detailed research. So while some people call it rich, and others call it “nasty ass bland ass shit” (lol), we like to call it thoughtful.
“Dogs should eat dog food”
This comment is great because it shows both a misunderstanding of what dog food actually is and confusion on cause and effect. Cedric and Edith never eat off of our plates nor beg for our food because they already get the good stuff. (Ok, so Edith sometimes puts on an Oscar-worthy pity party when we eat something good—she shakes, tears up…the works.) But they don’t EVER eat off of our plates. That is more about training than what we feed them. Although, if they were kibble-fed we’re guessing it would be more of a challenge to train them not to beg! They would feel like they have to fight for a bite of real food.
The idea that dogs should only eat commercial dog food is ridiculous. So much about is it not ideal, from the macronutrient profile, to the synthetics, to the quality of ingredients. We believe real food is the best food for every animal.
“Chihuahua on keto”
Edith was disgusted by the lettuce in our recent burger video and also celery in others, but she’s not on keto. We’ve previously discussed how working dogs—herding dogs, for example—appear to perform better on keto (ultra low carb diets), but Edith wasn’t considering her gym gains here. The buns were also keto (made with eggs) and lettuce can be part of a keto diet. Edith actually loves carbs. One of her favorite foods is sweet potato. In our Tomapawk Steak video, Edith actually went after the sweet potato before she ate the steak.
While it’s a staple on burgers, lettuce is actually pretty bland and not super nutritious. So Edith is more anti-lettuce than anti-carbs.
“I wish I had the money to do this”
Sometimes we feed expensive ingredient to the dogs, but that’s mostly a tool to bring attention to the fact that people are misguided about what dogs actually need. For most meals Ced and Ed just eat regular food. It doesn’t have to be expensive. If you’re cost conscious you can find proteins on sale for less than 2 dollars a pound. It really doesn’t take a lot of money, but it does take some effort.
Here is a recipe, free for everyone, that can feed Cedric for about $1.50 or less a day.
“Why not raw”
If you’ve been following us for a while, you probably know that we aren’t huge fans of raw diets. A lot of people report their dogs being healthier with shinier coats after starting raw food diets. This makes a lot of sense. Any whole food diet, even when raw, is better than kibble. However, raw diets are still sub-optimal for several reasons. You can see our previous post for more details. Here’s a brief summary.
Cooking is ancient technology. Cooking proteins alters them in a way (called denaturing) that makes them more digestible. The same is true for most plant based foods like whole grains and veggies. The exception would be fresh fruit, which we usually serve uncooked.
The modern supply chain is based on cooking. Most foods that are sold in markets or available for purchase are processed for cooking. According to one study, 80% of raw diets tested positive for food borne pathogens. Dogs are more resilient than people to bacteria like Salmonella, but they are NOT immune. Some Salmonella strains are particularly virulent. Furthermore, dogs fed raw food with pathogens shed them in the home.
Raw diets are often deficient in nutrients and need supplements. Depending on the kind of meat used and how exotic you go with organs, many nutrients are difficult to get in adequate amounts. For example, vitamin E, iodine, manganese are difficult to get with only meat based diets.
When it comes to egg whites specifically, we’ve eaten them raw before in desserts and cocktails; the dogs have too. But pasteurized often makes more sense. In recipes were we only need a large amount of egg whites, pasteurized egg whites that come in a carton are the better option for us so we don’t have to waste any yolks!
That’s it for this week.
All the best,
Joelle and R.A.