Remember that every animal, like every person, thrives on different foods. Some cats can live to over 20 eating dry food free choice and some dogs live a long life on grocery brand foods,  just as my husband does fine eating frozen dinners, fast food and drinking diet coke.  Some animals, like some people, need to be very careful about what they eat.

The first question is what do you think are the best foods – freshly prepared from local, sustainably grown foods or processed foods where you have to rely on a label and advertising to know the ingredients?

Next, once you want to feed fresh, the question is how to do it easily?

The following sites provide some coaching on feeding and opinions on what to feed. The way to know what is best for your companion is to try a new feeding practice for a few weeks and notice the differences (especially those listed in the Early Warning Signs handout) in your Healthy Animal’s Journal.

http://www.auntjeni.com/barf.htm – this shows pictures of preparing a fresh food meal. Helps make it look as easy as it can be.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu_zPhb-pNE – No need to do the allergy testing this family did – just try a new, fresh food.

http://www.whole-dog-journal.com/landing/barf.html/?s=GL_PD_RawFood&st=PPC&gclid=CKi11L7gzqoCFQVrKgodgja_2Q Dog lovers have learned from the Whole Dog Journal for years. Definitely worth a subscription. This links you to several articles about raw feeding.

http://www.dog-obedience-training-review.com/homemade-dog-food-recipes.html – will be exploring this site more. Very practical. I do not understand the pricing of the recipes, so will check that out. Feeding fresh should cost less or not much more than feeding a good quality processed food. This site has a way to figure the quantity to feed – 2-3% of total body weight – and gives examples of differences.