Congratulations, Katie!!

What are you cooking up for your dog's meals, if you don't mind my asking?  Do you use supplements?

I still haven't taken the plunge yet.   

JustMe; this is what I'm feeding with alot of help from friends who feed raw and home cooked. I also had some input from a friend who is a human nutrionist. As a disqualifier, it has worked for Reddie but may not work for all dogs. My dog is a 12 year old golden retriever (survived the pet recall and has an autoimmune disorder on prednisone), moderately active - so this was tailored to her needs.

A total day consists of:(divided into 2 meals)
8.5 oz cooked mixture of brown rice,sushi rice, oatmeal and barley (sometimes equal parts, sometimes more oats and barley, it's made in a 7day batch and portioned out and frozen). Sometimes I will add quinona, or couscous, or whole grain pasta if we had for dinner the night before.

6oz pureed lightly cooked vegtables (could be a mix of or a singular; sweet potato, zucchini, carrots, gr beans, black beans, kidney beans, peas.  This dog does not do well on acorn squash,alfalfa,spinach or broccoli)

12 oz cooked white meat chicken (we have kept her off of high fat meats, with the pred she could lean torwards pancreatitis) or turkey or lean ground beef,salmon,cod.

1oz of chicken liver, cooked a couple of times a week (this was the toughest for me - I saute on a pan on an outdoor grill so the order isn't in the house).

1 hard boiled egg each AM (if I have been a bad human and have no cooked meat, I feed 1 whole egg and 2 egg whites at that meal).

1T goats milk yogurt or ricotta cheese if I have some in the frig. (provides a probiotic)

1T organic safflower oil, 200mg Vit E, 2000 mg Salmon oil, 1/2 of a human Vit pill, calcium to balance out the phosphorous at a 1:3 ratio

1-2 oz of cut of bananas, a few blueberries if in season, maybe a couple of cranberries if we have them, cantalope, peaches, apples, apple sauce, pears, etc. These are in limited quanity as a snack since they are high in sugar.

I religiously weigh her pan before feeding and strive for 14 to 16 oz/ meal and try to feed 1200 Kcal/day

The amounts and weights or type of food can vary by meal or day, but I try to meet her needs on a daily to weekly basis. Again this is specific to this dog and her needs. What I found is that it is not hard to cook for her, and having cooked chicken in the freezer has made for quick human emergency meals! I shop the sales and have worked out a deal with the butcher, etc. to cut costs.

JustMe; I won't say homecooking is ultra easy. Takes time once a week to cook the bulk meal, we need to be home to put her meals together, I can't imagine a boarding kennel doing this for me, the vet has said if she came in to them - they would feed canned or I could bring in meals, traveling:I need a place to heat up her meals; so there are negatives. I think there are good alternative out there now - that weren't there a year ago. We are dealing with an autoimmune disease that has now gone into remission and kidneys that were thought to have been functioning at only 25% - with the homecooking things are looking so great that I've been warned don't quit.

Katie