Healthy Meals For Man's Best Friend - Guest Post

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Recently, a gentleman named MD Abu Selim, with ByteBest.com, asked if he could write a guest piece on homemade dog food.  It was a different kind of request, to be sure.  I thought about it though, and decided to give it a shot.  I mean, if Rachel Ray can enter the dog food game I can accept a post about it.
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Healthy Meals For Man's Best Friend 

| Subject: James' dog, Harley, as a puppy |
| Date: 12/25/2015 | Photographers: Bonnie Kiester |

If you're a pet lover like me, you've probably searched for recipes for preparing dog food at home.  There are many ready-made brands of dog food on the market, but knowing which ones are healthy can be a tricky business.  Thus, I suggest you feed your dog homemade dog food, so you can be sure that what you're feeding your dog is healthy and nutritious, not to mention cost effective.

There are thousands of recipes for homemade dog food.  Many of them need lots of time to prepare, and are quite complicated to cook.  With this in mind , our kitchens have come with some of the easiest recipes for making homemade dog food.

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The Standard One with Turkey

This is the most popular meal among our dogs.  It's our baseline recipe  and the easiest one to prepare since it utilizes common ingredients which most people already have on hand.  Not only is it easy to prepare, but it's very healthy for your dog’s health.

Ingredients:
Brown rice - 1 and 1/2 cups
Ground Turkey meat - 3 pounds
Peas - 1/2 cup (canned or frozen)
Shredded carrots - 2 pcs
Shredded zucchini - 1 pcs
Olive oil - 1 tablespoon
Baby spinach - 3 cups (chopped)

Directions:
• Take 3 cups of water in a large saucepan and put the 1 ½ cups of brown rice in it. Then cook the rice according to the instruction printed on the packet.
• Take a large stockpot and put the olive oil in it and then heat it. You can use an oven with medium heat to heat the oil. Add the ground turkey to the oil and cook it for 3 -5 minutes until it becomes brown. Make sure that the meat is cooked thoroughly.
• Mix the peas, spinach, carrots, zucchini, cooked turkey and brown rice and heat them again around 3 -5 minutes until the point that the spinach has withered and the blend is warmed enough.
• Finally, cool it and then give it to your dog.

This is the standard healthy meal for your dog with 50% protein (ground turkey and peas), 25% veggies (spinach, carrots, and zucchini), and 25% grains (brown rice).

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Beef & Vegetable Mix Meal

This beef and veggie crockpot version of Delicious Chungah’s recipe works great in a slow cooker.  This recipe is much like the one above, but uses beef for the protein instead of turkey.

Ingredients:
Brown rice - 1 and 1/2 cups
Ground beef - 2 and 1/2 pounds
Peas - 1/2 cup (canned or frozen)
Butternut squash - 1 and 1/2 cups (chopped)
Carrots - 1 and 1/2 cups (chopped)
Kidney beans - 1 (15-ounce) can (drained and rinsed)

Directions:
• Take 3 cups of water in a large saucepan and put the 1 ½ cups of brown rice in it. Then cook the rice according to the instruction printed on the packet.
• Stir the ground beef, carrots, kidney beans, butternut squash, peas with 4 cups of water in a slow cooker
• Cover and cook them in medium heat for 5-6 hours. For quick cooking, you can use high heat for 2-3 hours.
• Mix the rice with the mixer and cook in medium heat for 3-5 minutes.
• Then cool down the mixer.
Your dog meal is ready. Just take it in a bowl and give to your pet.

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Layer Cake Meal

If your dog doesn’t want to eat regular food, then you can try this recipe for her.

Ingredients:
Brown rice - 1 cups
Chicken - 1 kg (minced)
Egg - 1 pc
Apple - 1 pc (medium size)
Peas - ½ cup (canned or frozen)
Carrots - ½ cup (chopped)
Sweet corn - ½ cup

Directions:
• First, heat your oven at 170 degrees.
• Put the carrot, peas and sweet corn in a pot and cook them until softened.
• Peel the apple and cut it into as small pieces as possible.
• Cook the brown rice in a large saucepan following the package.
• Take a cake pan with baking paper.
• Take 1/2 of the minced chicken and place in bottom of the pan.
• Take 2/3 of the veggie and rice mix and put them on top of the chicken base.
• Place rest of the chicken on top of the veggie and rice mix.
• Pop it into the pre-heated oven and cook for 35 minutes.
• Let cool down and give the cake to your dog.

You can feed your dog any one of these meals, or rotate between them to give your pet some variety in their diet.  All of them are healthy and nutritious, so you really can't go wrong.

If you enjoyed this blog, you may like to read about chew proof dog beds here.