How I decide on what goes into Conker's food

I've gone into it a couple times but never really in detail.

Over the past year I have learned a lot about canine nutrition through talking with other dog owners online, websites, and most importantly, scientific research. Never leave that last one out. Having scientific facts to back you up is a lot better than "some person on the internet".
Granted, there are some truly knowledgeable people I have gotten information from, but again, it's better to understand why they say something than to just follow it blindly.
And I am so totally into the why of things, it's why I do so much research.

This is quite long, so I am putting it under a break.

I like Chicken Q's

Them chicken quarters are nice. This is the first time I've gotten them, and I think I'll be buying them a lot more often now. So easy to portion up compared to a whole chicken. (Strange sounding, but it's true for me.) It really is too bad that we don't have a chest freezer. That would really come in handy.

Last night I made up nine meals for Conker (one is not shown) and one each for Juneau and Sasha that consist of roughly 1/2 chicken and 1/2 pork with the usuals thrown in. Not pictured is the oat-based food that accompanies these. I don't really make that in advanced.

I will write a more detailed post on the oat-foods sometime soon.

Today was Chicken Q day!

That bag of chicken quarters I bought has been sitting in the fridge for a couple days and was thawed enough for me to wrestle the bits apart. I grabbed two chunks that weighed a little less than a pound each for the Girls and hacked one into smaller chunks for Conker.
I added in some turkey liver, gizzard, canned mollusks, and an egg for the Girls. Conker basically got the same with a few small changes.

Thanks, Blogger, for making this picture look like crap

Conker bit me while doing his down/sit/wait before getting his food. This is an increasing occurrence that is really getting on my nerves. He didn't draw blood (thankfully I taught him good bite inhibition) but that doesn't mean it's okay to bite the hand that feeds you.

I also made up some oat bran for the dogs. Conker gets this just about every night, oat bran or oatmeal, since raw foods alone (at least what I can get) do not contain all the nutrients for a dog to remain healthy in the long-term. The oat-foods have Thiamin, Foliate, Manganese, Magnesium, Potassium, Iron, and a couple other trace minerals that fill in the gaps where the other raw foods are lacking.
I only give a small portion of oat-based foods, just enough to supply the correct amount of missing nutrients. Sometimes I add in an egg, sardines, or some cream. Heavy whipping-cream is basically all fat and very little lactose with a bit of Vitamin A and D. I put it in my own oats in place of sugar or honey, or with one, or both...
The biggest reason why I give sardines is because of their Vitamin D content. Raw foods alone do not have enough of this, so I give canned fish to supply it.

Simmering Lithe Tea

The dog oat-food is made with Lithe Tea instead of regular water. I still don't have an opinion on this stuff, I will soonish but not quite yet.

Almost-finished Oat Bran

The oat-food is cooked with a bit of extra water and for longer than you would for a human. It then sits on the stove for a couple minutes to cool and thicken.
Next I add in things like sardines and cream. One can of sardines for three dogs (I could use less but I only feed the big dogs this every now and then) and about 1 tablespoon cream for each dog. I stir this all real good then let it cool a bit more before serving.

Oat Bran with added sardines and cream

The Girls each get a little over a cup, Conker about 3/4 of a cup. They have no problem finishing it all. I prefer to feed the raw meal and oat-food with at least a couple hours between them. I usually feed the raw meal (or kibble for the Girls) in the morning/early afternoon, and the oat-food in the evening.
Sometimes I feed them together but Conker tends to become more picky when I do that and will only finish part of his food, so if I space the meals out he finishes them with no stupid occurring.


Man, I love this home-made dog food stuff. It's so freakin fun. Researching, planning, buying, preparing, and making meals for the dogs much more fun than scooping out kibble and dumping it into a bowl.

Taste Test: The Honest Kitchen Force

While in AZ for Christmas holiday I picked up some trail boxes of The Honest Kitchen.  One of them was Force, a chicken based formula. I was a bit hesitant to try it due to the chicken but I wanted to know if Conker would react badly to just a small three-day trial.

Force comes in a green box

Ingredients:
Dehydrated free-range chicken, organic flaxseed, potatoes, celery, sweet potatoes, apples, alfalfa, organic kelp, honey, zucchini, green beans, cabbage, bananas, papayas, basil, garlic, rosemary, tricalcium phosphate, choline chloride, zinc amino acid chelate, vitamin D3 supplement, vitamin E supplement, potassium iodide, potassium chloride, iron amino acid chelate, copper amino acid chelate.

Guaranteed Analysis: 
Protein, 21% min
Fat, 15% min
Fiber, 6.5% max
Moisture, 8.5% max
446 Calories per cup

Force is one of several grain-free formulas. I am not into the exclusively grain-free thing, and most grain-free foods use potatoes instead which is something I'm not quite fond of.  However, I don't think that there's much more potatoes in Force than Keen (one of the kinds I feed Conker) for that to be of much affect.
One thing I find a bit strange is the flaxseed and it's placement on the ingredient hierarchy. Flax seems to be an "it" thing right now, and dog food is no exception.

Dry Force in a ZiwiPeak measuring cup

I gave Conker roughly 1/2 cup Force with some extra raw items during the trial. He really liked it but I cannot say if he likes it more than one formula or another.

Force costs $42.50 for a 4 pound box and $78 for a 10 pound box on The Honest Kitchen's website. That's a bit steep for me, considering Conker does fine on Keen and Verve.

Re-hydrated Force

I did not notice any immediate ill effects (due to chicken) from feeding this to Conker. This might be because it's dehydrated and not "cooked" (dehydrated meats are still, in my book, cooked, just less so than conventional kibbles) so it might not effect Conker like cooked chicken does.
Anyways, I don't think that three days is long enough to have that set in stone, and one of these days I'll get around to getting a larger box to give a real trial.

Closeup of re-hydrated Force

Snow Catch

This is Conker's second favorite snow game. Or leaf game, or water game, or dirt/sand/whatever game. The first is always the run-around-in-x substance-like-he's-on-fire game.

Okay, I think he's had enough.

Vote for Conker!

Cause if I win, I get $100 of treats/chews/toys from bestbullysticks.  It's a facebook competition so you've actually got to "like" instead of vote but really, it's the same thing.

Click link for voting place

Thanks!

Snow Day!

We haven't had one of these for... a whole year! Conker was psyched last night with the snow, and even more excited today on our morning hike. (Morning? Yes, I did get up before noon for the first time ever.)

And now, the evidence.

On the way to Cathedral Hills, JPR (lameass local public radio station) played Winter by Antonio Vivaldi (how cliche) but hey, it's not like we get snow much so I guess it was alright. I actually really like that piece, it's my favorite of the Four Seasons.

The first thing Conker did when we hit the trail was take off off-trail somewhere. I don't know if he was chasing something (looked like it) or was just OMFGSNOWGOTTARUNOMGOMGWTFRUN! I imagine many other Shiba owners would have had a miniature (or major) meltdown at the sight (or lack of) their Shiba running off into the snow-covered forest. I just walked around a bit then stepped off-trail and hollered at Conker to get his scrawny butt back here, and he did, so we began our snow hike.

I, like I usually do, overdressed a bit. Though snow was on the ground, it was a relatively "warm" 36 degrees or so. I had on long johns with waterproof (but not snowboarding, I almost but didn't wear those) pants, my nasty-ass shoes (smell like the pond I went into to fetch my Coots), two pairs of socks, a scarf, and my favorite jacket that I always wear. And a raccoon skin hat. With a tail.

Conker blew his coat early this year, thanks to the trip to AZ for Christmas. He didn't seem to notice though, and the lack of undercoat didn't slow him down one bit. Sped him up I might think, actually.

Obligatory Shiba-on-the-pick-nick-table picture.

There was some pretty spiffy scenery too.

Some parts of the trails had more snow than others. My guess is that something around 2 inches fell in Cathedral Hills which is only a little over 5 miles from my house. Funny how much of a difference about 100-300 feet in elevation makes when it comes to this. (Other places not-too-far-away got 6 inches or more.)

 We played Conker's second favorite snow game. (More pictures of this will be posted later.)

Overall it was a really nice hike. We did about 3.75 miles, not too bad, but I'd like to start making these hikes 5+ as the average instead of slightly over 3. We only ran into one other person, a man and his Basset Hound who got along with Conker nicely.


After driving back home, I took all three dogs to the dog park. That short hour between when I left and got back resulted in almost all the snow in town being melted. It's almost all completely gone now.

All dogs did a lot of running around and getting muddy.

I think Juneau had the most fun out of the three.  She got the most mud on her and her harness. The thing finally looks like it's been used now.

Haven't experienced this for a year!

I'd be running around like a dumbass too. Oh wait... I did.

You know your Shiba is bored when...

You hear a great mighty SIGH behind you, so you turn to look over your shoulder and you see this:

It's also a good indicator for rainy weather. Rain = BORING.

The Yard Shark

I made this thing a couple years ago during my last semester at the community college I went to school to learn welding. It was the third metal sculpture I'd made, and by far my favorite.

It's made from 14 gauge cold rolled steel. Nice, thick, quality stuff. It's about 5 feet long.

It's articulated in many places. Head, body, fins, tail, so it can be posed or whatever. It used to have a movable lower jaw but the rod holding it on broke somehow and since I don't have a welder, I haven't been able to fix it yet.

It's based off a sturgeon, barracuda and thresher shark.

Right now it lives under a small tree in the back yard. The dogs are smart to avoid it, it can easily hurt someone with all it's sharp rusty edges.

If I had a welder, the whole yard would be filled with stuff like this. But I don't, so it's rather boring.