Even foods made for human consumption are often suspect. Why else the huge rise in organic foods? We want to eat better, and personally I've found that organic foods not only taste much better, the way I remember foods tasting from back in my childhood, they also don't have a lot of the side effects that "standard foods" have.

Many people rely on fast foods that are typically over-salted and over-sugared. No need to even touch on the possible chemical content. If you want some scary stuff to read, start with this paper . And this page tells you the key foods to buy organically . Want organic meats? Here's where to look for the farms that produce them in North Carolina . And tis site gives you more reasons to look for organic foods .

So why not do the same for my dogs? No more fast food for them they are going to start eating much better. The interesting thing about it is that it is probably going to cost less than buying canned and/or dry dog food.

One of the main concerns I had was whether anything I created would be balanced enough so that my dogs would not be missing anything vital. I do not know enough about dog nutrition to make this call, but a book I had purchased a while ago has been proving very useful in this regard: Dr. Pitcairn's Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs & Cats, by Richard H. Pitcairn, DVM, PhD and Susan Hubble Pitcairn. I have the older version of this book, which can also be fund on Amazon.com.

In all honesty I had not looked at this book for some time. My dogs have generally been healthy and happy and full of energy, so I never felt I needed to look. But this book, among the many things it offers, has all sorts of recipes for both dogs and cats that include supplements to make sure the animal has everything they need for a good healthy diet. There are even vegetarian recipes for dogs, if one should decide to go this direction. There are definitely benefits to eating vegetarian for humans, apparently some of these also apply to dogs.

We'll see what happens. No matter what, I now have a better veterinarian due to recent events, and I can always check with him on some of this as we go along. It will be interesting, based on the past 3 weeks of teh very slow healing going on with my one dog's broken leg, to see how this change affects his rate of healing.