So You Want to Make Your Own Dog Food

“Can’t I just cook for her?” “Can I make my own?” “How can I do it myself?” If you’ve ever stood at the kitchen counter wondering this, you’re in good company. These are some of the most frequent questions I hear from owners once they’ve learned the downside of kibble and the real advantages of a fresh food diet. And I love getting them — because it means you’re thinking about what actually goes into your dog’s bowl.

Often, people tell me they’ve already started. They describe meals of chicken breast, carrots, peas, and rice, maybe with a spoonful of cottage cheese or yogurt tossed in “for the calcium and probiotics.” I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but neither of those delivers a meaningful amount of either. It’s a wonderful instinct paired with some very common misinformation — and that’s exactly the gap I want to help you close.

Others tell me they found a recipe on the internet. Some are good. Many are not. A great number are nutritionally incomplete and lean on supplements to patch the holes. That’s not the end of the world, and honestly, it’s still a step up from kibble.

But here’s where I start to raise an eyebrow. Every so often someone tells me they used a free online “formulation tool,” added a single proprietary supplement sold by the company that is behind that website, and now their dog is supposedly getting everything he needs. The site offering this tool lets you pick ingredients from five categories, then bundles them with their supplement to produce a “nutritionally complete” meal. They’ll even hand you free recipes — recipes that, you guessed it, rely on that same supplement to cover the deficiencies baked into the formulation.

Stop and sit with that for a second. Does it strike anyone else as odd that you’d need a manufactured supplement to reach enough iron, or enough vitamin D, in a homemade, fresh food recipe? If the food were truly built around real, nutrient-dense ingredients, why would the math fall apart without a powder?

Talk is cheap, so let’s look at one of the free recipes anyone can download from the site.

This recipe is built for a healthy adult dog weighing 35 pounds. According to it, she’d eat over a pound of potato per day, plus roughly a quarter pound of frozen peas and carrots. Without their magic powder, there are 12 nutrients that are deficient. Do the arithmetic and you’ll find she’s eating about four times as much carbohydrate as meat. For a species whose body is built to run on animal protein and fat, that should give you pause.

Now that you have chewed on that recipe, here is another one:

Again — wildly carbohydrate heavy, this time rationing the dog a grand total of 2¾ ounces of meat per day. And what veterinarian, nutritionist, or thoughtful pet professional is going to look you in the eye and recommend feeding your dog pasta and tomato sauce? And I bet it does not surprise you that 14 nutrients are deficient without their magic supplement powder. If these are the examples the site puts forward, imagine what an owner might cobble together with the DIY generator on their own. Perhaps something like this:

Here’s the part that really gets me. On paper, with the supplement added, these recipes check the “nutritionally complete” box. But complete on a spreadsheet and biologically appropriate for a dog are two very different things. Yes, a dog could survive on them. But could a dog truly thrive on 59% carbohydrates? On potatoes and peas as the bulk of the meal? On cranberry sauce, bread, and industrial corn oil? Surviving is a low bar. I want better than survival for your dog, and I suspect you do too.

Here’s the encouraging part, and there genuinely is one. You are not stuck choosing between a bag of kibble and a homemade meal that’s 60% starch. There are real options out there for nutritionally complete recipes that are biologically appropriate and built around nutrients from actual food. Visit the Forever Dog Life Nutrition page for a variety of raw and cooked recipes for your puppy or dog. What I love about these is the detailed nutritional information attached to each one, so you can see exactly how closely a recipe meets current standards instead of taking it on faith. And if you don’t yet have your copy of the book, get it now — it’s worth its place on your shelf!

The urge to cook for your dog is a good one. It usually comes from love, and from finally seeing kibble for what it is. The trap isn’t cooking at home — it’s trusting a formulation “tool” that quietly leans on a supplement to disguise a starch-heavy, meat-light meal as “complete.” Real nourishment for a dog starts with real, species-appropriate food, not a powder doing the heavy lifting.

In the near future, I’ll be sharing options for those of you who want to craft your own recipes thoughtfully, in a biologically appropriate way, using the most accurate nutritional data available.