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Homemade Diet Resources: Books, Web Sites and Email Lists

Photo of Westie wearing glasses with a stack of books

There are a number of resources to provide support to those who want to feed their dogs a homemade diet. I recommend reading at least one book before (or soon after) starting. If you find you still need help, the web sites below may be useful. Email groups can answer questions, though keep in mind that not all the advice you receive will be reliable, so don't rely on email groups exclusively to learn how best to feed your dog.

See Also:

Also see these articles on homemade diets for dogs:

Books

Those interested in learning more about home feeding should check out the following books. Most are available at Dogwise.com, some are available at general bookstores like .

Books on raw diets:

Give Your Dog A Bone and Grow Your Pup With Bones and The BARF Diet by Ian Billinghurst, DVM
Raw Dog Food: Make it Easy for You and Your Dog by Carina MacDonald
Natural Nutrition for Dogs and Cats: The Ultimate Diet by Kymythy Schultze, AHI
Switching to Raw by Susan Johnson

Billinghurst, MacDonald and Schultze include bones in their diets, and do not use grains for the most part (grains can cause allergy, digestive and other problems, and dogs have no nutritional requirement for grains in their diet). Susan Johnson's book is based on Billinghurst's diet, though it uses more bone than I think is optimal. Both MacDonald's and Johnson's books are simple for beginners. The newest Billinghurst book, The BARF Diet, is easier to follow than the two earlier Billinghurst books.

Books on combination diets, with both boneless recipes and those that include bone:

Dr. Becker's Real Food for Healthy Dogs and Cats by Karen Shaw Becker, DVM, and Beth Taylor
Unlocking the Canine Ancestral Diet - Healthier Dog Food the ABC Way by Steve Brown.

I have grouped these two books together because they are very similar. Steve Brown worked with Dr. Becker and Beth Taylor to help them balance the diets in Dr. Becker's book. Both books advocate raw food, though you can cook the meat as long as it doesn't include bone. Recipes are low in carbohydrates and mostly grain-free, though grains are an optional small component of either diet.

These books are ideal for those who are concerned about homemade diets meeting NRC (National Research Council) recommendations, as all recipes are analyzed to ensure they are complete. Dr. Becker's book is a little simpler to follow, but relies more on supplements -- the book provides guidelines for making your own supplement mix to go with the recipes in the book. Brown's book relies more on foods such as oysters to supply needed nutrients, and provides additional details about exactly how the recipes are balanced, telling you how to go about putting together a balanced, homemade diet, with a focus on balancing the different types of fat in the diet. Brown also provides guidelines for feeding fresh foods once a week to those who feed a commercial diet the rest of the time.

The recipes are a little more complicated than I think is strictly necessary, though an argument can be made that if you don't concern yourself with the supplements they recommend, it's possible that the diet you feed could be unbalanced or deficient in some areas. A lot of research has gone into these books, certainly more than any of the other books listed above and below, and I have a lot of respect for the authors. These are also the most recent books listed (published in December, 2009 and January, 2010). See my article on sample low-fat diets for a little more information on Brown's book.

Also see See Spot Live Longer by Steve Brown and Beth Taylor, a well-referenced book on the value of feeding a homemade raw diet, but not a "how to" book.

Books on combination raw and cooked diets: cooked diets (including diets that use raw meat but not bone):

Dr. Pitcairn's New Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats by Richard Pitcairn, DVM
Natural Food Recipes for Healthy Dogs by Carol Boyle (2006 edition)
Home Prepared Dog and Cat Diets by Donald Strombeck, DVM
Eat, Drink, and Wag Your Tail DVD by Micki Voisard and Dr. Richard Pitcairn
Holistic Guide for a Healthy Dog by Wendy Volhard and Kerry Brown, DVM
The Healthy Dog Cookbook by Jonna Anne and Mary Straus

Pitcairn and Volhard use raw meat without bones in their diets (although you can cook the meat if you prefer). Strombeck's book uses cooked meats, though you could choose to feed them raw. Volhard has a new edition released in 2000, Pitcairn has a new edition released in 2005. Both Pitcairn and Strombeck offer recipes for dogs with health problems. Volhard's recipes are by far the most complicated, unless you use her NDF Formula. All of these diets are heavily grain-based, though you can substitute pureed or cooked veggies, such as sweet potatoes, for some or all of the grains (with the exception of the Volhard diet, which does not allow substitutions).

Carol Boyle's book is about sharing your own meals with your dogs. If you enjoy cooking healthy meals for yourself and your family, or think this is something you'd like to learn, this book is wonderful. It is easy to read and understand, and offers a common sense approach to feeding dogs (and people) a healthy diet. It is filled with recipes you can use to help you get started, but you need to read the text as well, which includes important guidelines for using the recipes. Be sure to get the new edition, published in 2006, and available on Carol's web site.

I have not viewed the video, Eat, Drink, and Wag Your Tail, but understand that it is less of a "how to" than a "reasons why," though it does contain some information on preparing homemade diets.

I was talked into writing the introduction to The Healthy Dog Cookbook, and ended up doing the nutritional analyses and the comments as well. I was asked to do the recipes, but declined, since I prefer to give dietary guidelines rather than recipes. The recipes in the book do follow my guidelines. I feel they are overly complicated, but they use appropriate proportions of meat and plant products, and as long as you feed a variety rather than using the same recipe all the time, they should be fine to use. I'm not recommending this book over the other books listed on this page, and I make no royalties from it.

Not Recommended

There are many other books on feeding a homemade diet that I would not recommend. Many contain diets that are incomplete or inappropriate, such as adding the wrong amount of calcium (or none at all). In particular, I do not recommend The Whole Pet Diet: Eight Weeks to Great Health for Dogs and Cats by Andi Brown, due to nutritional deficiencies in the recipes and other problems. Other books that don't properly address the need for calcium include Real Food for Dogs (Moore & Davis), Barker's Grub (Edalati), and Woofing it Down (O'Grady). If a book is not on my list, it's usually because I don't think it's one you should use, but if you have a question about a specific book, you can contact me to ask (see my contact info below).

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Web Sites

Websites with information about feeding a raw diet. Also see the Homemade Diets section.

FAQs:

Pictorials:

Overviews with diet information:

References:

CATS: See Cat Food Reviews for information on commercial foods.
For those of you interested in more natural ways to feed your cats, here are a few references:
I have also seen Dr. Pitcairn's Fatty Feline Fare recipe recommended, with the following changes: omit the grains and add a very small amount of cooked mashed veggies and/or raw food processed greens. Include the taurine that he says is optional, and give fish oil instead of cod liver oil. Use calcium lactate powder or other forum of pure calcium instead of bone meal to reduce the amount of phosphorus fed.

Lastly, I came across Yet Another Cat Food Guide recently, and was impressed with the articles that I read. This site has information on commercial cat foods as well as homemade diets.

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Email Groups

These are groups I can recommend, though you should always be careful about relying on advice from email lists. Also see the section on Email Support Lists for help with specific health problems.

Dogs:

Cats:

There are other lists that I can't recommend due to their dogmatic and intolerant approaches to homemade diets. Any group that tells you there is only one right way to feed your dog, or that dismisses problems caused by the diet as unimportant, should be avoided.

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If you have any questions or comments, please contact me. My name is Mary Straus and you can email me at either or


Rocky is a Yorkie-Poodle mix who had suffered from digestive problems his whole life. Click on his image to read about the diet his owner finally found to help him.
Pashoshe Fisher, a Chihuahua, was a wonderful, joyful companion to his owner for 19 & a half years. He was on a high quality raw diet for over half his life.
This is Ella, my Norwich Terrier.