You've Got Mail!

What a Day to be a dog! Just in time for my return from Seattle, everything arrived.

After a quick trip to Starbucks and an extensive walk, Bailey and I made our way to the mailbox, where we hit the motherlode: three package notices. And they were all for Bo! One contained our new Orbee balls (though we'd just used a tennis ball on our walk), another was the final dog nutrition book, and the final was a box of new-trition. I'll get back to that in a minute.

After that, we headed down to the HMB dog store, where Bailey took a particular liking to Dr Becker's Bites. I read the ingredients, and they are pretty pure (liver, Vitamin E and garlic). Especially like the "Baked on" date on the bag. April 18 - that's 3 weeks ago. Cool. Aside from the open box of bulk food that he always takes freely from, I've never seen Boda select a treat so forcefully.

Then we were off to Whole Foods, where I found that they carry Halo brand pet foods. These are made by the woman who wrote the only dog food book I recommend, the Whole Pet Diet, and whose company is now co-owned by Ellen Degeneres. The 20 oz cans of Spot's Stew (for someone Bailey's size) are $4 a pop, and I'm pretty sure he'd need 1 in the morning and 1 at night. I bought two for emergencies, but those aren't a realistic option for us. That said, when you read the ingredients, you'll see it's the purest list you've ever seen. And it's literally the same Spot's Stew recipe we've been making out of her book. So onward, Jeeves! Take us to the produce aisle for stew ingredients!

I picked up the usual, but doubled the amount so I could make enough for a whole week this time: organic celery, carrots, 4 little zucchinis, 4 yellow squash, a few handfuls of green beans and 2 sweet potatoes. You really don't need much of these to make a weeks' worth of stew. Then I picked up 2 lbs of lean ground beef at the butcher, where I also saw they had ground lamb, buffalo, and a bunch of other things we could eventually try, but that cost twice as much.

All of this, for those of you counting, cost $17. We already have the grains at home (quinoa, barley, bulgar, etc), and I've already purchased the Essential Fatty Acids oils that I put in. So if the two batches I whipped up tonight can last the whole week, this nets out to about $1K a year. I'm not sure what I was spending on kibble, but this is the best use of $1000 I can think of.

Now, the fine print: I also bought a bunch of other food stuff that arrived in the mail on Friday (new-trition). These things aren't recommended by the Whole Pet Diet, but by the supposed pet cooking guru: Dr Pitcairn. I didn't buy everything he recommends (a thoroughly overwhelming mix of vitamins and minerals), but I did buy the ingredients for his Healthy Powder. Healthy Powder consists of nutritional (brewer's) yeast, lecithin, vitamin c, kelp powder and Kal Bone Meal. If you're interested, I can tell you the brands I chose, but suffice it to say all are available on Amazon. Basically, you mix a bit of each together, refrigerate the mixture, and give 1 TBSP on top of every meal. Total cost of all these supplies was something like $60.

So our routine is now to:
(1) cook one stew batch for the fridge and one for the freezer
(2) add a tbsp of healthy powder before serving
(3) add a tbsp of the EFA oil mixture before serving
Plus two occasional, non-mandatories:
(4) crush a clove of garlic on top since we're no longer frontlining
(5) add some chopped parsley for good digestion

This sounds absolutely nutso, I know.
And you should see "my shelf" in the fridge -- it's now Bodie's shelf.
But it's really not that hard.
And I'm only on my third time.
I'm sure I'll work out the process into a streamlined, simple system.
And I'm going to keep track of what I spend, and also the effects on Bailey, so I can offer some advice about which parts of this chaos are worth it, and which are a waste of time.

I can report one act of restraint which might restore your faith in my sanity. The dog store was selling elevated food bowl stands for $100. I've seen the elevated bowls around, but honestly haven't read much on them. Apparently they are ergonomically correct and help improve digestion. Since we've shaken up Bailey's diet so much, so suddenly, any digestion aids are good. But $100? I couldn't justify that. So we came home and "elevated" Bailey's bowl ourselves by putting it up on a teak side table. Worked quite well; digestion issues solved.

UPDATE: Oh, one other thing arrived. Kodie's ashes. Got a call from the vet that they are in. I haven't been quite up to retrieving them, but I will soon, because we're having a ceremony in exactly 13 days, as soon as Buppy & Paunnie & Grandogma arrive for the 2008 summer session of Camp Fluppy Puppy.