30 Days of Creativity: Day 2

Today’s effort for 30 Days of Creativity may seem strange to people, but it has the unqualified approval of four three of The Compound dogs. As those of you who’ve read Tim’s or my LJ for any length of time know, we feed our dogs raw diet. To give them the kind of nutrients their wild ancestors would have gotten by eating prey (and their prey’s stomach contents), I add vegetables to the raw meat, bones, and organs they eat. The reason this process is “creative” will be explained below. I promise there are no gross photos behind the cut–unless vegetables frighten you.

The tough ends we break off the fresh asparagus that we eat is donated to the dogs.

Then I add some bean sprouts. They smell like dirt. Dogs like dirt, so this works for them.

Mmmm, beets. I don’t eat them, but they make things pretty and they also smell like dirt. Score!

Squash and zucchini, which I love, too.

Carrots and celery. And now this colander is full.

In a second colander, some leftover green leaf and iceberg lettuce that we didn’t use in our salads.

Fresh parsley.

Mix all the vegetables together.

Then open a can of pumpkin. Not the spicy kind for pie filling, just plain pumpkin. Did you know that pumpkin is something you can give your dog either when he’s constipated or when he has diarrhea? It helps either issue!

Because dogs’ colons are much shorter than humans’, the veggies won’t stay inside them long enough to break down and give the dogs the full nutritional value. There’s nothing wrong with giving your dogs a snack like fresh carrots, but if you want them to get all the nutrients, give them a head start on digestion by blending the vegetables. I start by putting in some pumpkin.

Then I add the other veggies.

Veggie smoothie! Do I taste this? Yes, I do. I love vegetables and if my jaw ever had to be wired, I’d happily drink a concoction like this. Even with the beets.

So that I only have to do this every couple of weeks, we freeze the veggies into cubes. When we portion out their raw meat and bones once a week, a veggie cube gets added to each container. This food is thawed only as needed, and by the time the dogs eat it, nothing’s frozen anymore.

Guinness, however, would happily eat a frozen veggie cube. Rex and Pixie probably would, too. Margot’s a little less interested; there always has to be one kid who won’t eat her vegetables unless they get mixed with something else (if you really want to see raw food photos, I have some in this post).

Raw fruit can also be blended in with the veggies, and I’ve done that, too, when fruit is ripening too quickly for us to eat it. Please remember never to feed dogs onions or grapes, apple seeds, or pits of fruits. Go light on nightshades (tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant). Feed only small amounts of liver occasionally–and dogs shouldn’t get potato peelings, cooked or raw.

Bon appetit!