Home cooking dog food has been quite the adventure. We read several books, researched online and eventually worked with a holistic vet to come up with a proper diet for our dogs. Well, the trouble with high needs dogs is they never seem to be okay for long on anything. While we lived in Orange County, Linus was doing very well on a diet of potatoes, beef and cooked veggies. (Charlotte we have discovered seems to be just fine with any sort of home cooked meal- of course- the French Bulldog with no skin allergies). When we moved to our current home in Ventura County, Linus had a terrible allergic reaction to something, broke out in itchy hives and doggy diarrhea (sorry if that was TMI) and has not recovered since. So now we are back to square one. It could be environmental but our new vet thinks it also could be diet. We’ve tried switching him back to kibble which just made everything worse. Now we are working on a home cooked, no grain diet. (We had been switching back and forth between the cheaper, oats and beef and potatoes and beef).
We are using this book as a guide and now make both dogs potatoes and turkey. Here is our grain free/limited ingredient recipe:
10 lbs potatoes (washed, peeled and cut up into bite size pieces)
3 lbs ground turkey
bone meal powder
vitamin powder
extra virgin olive oil
bake the potatoes and cook the turkey and mix together. Add Bone meal and vitamin powder and mix together with 2 tblspoons of olive oil. Should last for about five days depending on the size and number of dogs. This recipe is for two dogs (one medium size and one large dog).
Anyone out there have high needs dogs? Dogs with allergies? What dog food have you had luck with?
summerplayshouse 
I so respect you for doing this.
I have an emotionally high-need dog, but he is 11 so he’s slowed down a little bit.
No food allergies or anything, but we do find that good quality food is so much better for the joints, skin and fur. We cut corners for a while with dog food quality, and boy, we never will again.
Oh yes Cory, they are certainly high needs emotionally as well. But, I think that may have been our fault. 🙂 I keep going back and forth every now and then about whether or not to go back to a high quality dog kibble, but I think we’re invested now. It’s part of our routine. Plus, our dogs would laugh at us now if we tried to put dry kibble in their bowls. Cest la vie.
Hey Summer, we have to talk about this in person-it seems we have even more in common! I have been making our dogs’ food for 4+ years now. Our oldest chihuahua had terrible skin allergies to commercial dog food, plus that stuff is just gross. We have tried a bunch of recipes but have settled on ground turkey, brown rice, frozen peas & carrots. All four are happy and healthy!