Home-Cooked Food for Dogs in India: How to Get It Right

Rice, dal and a little chicken. That is what a large share of Indian dogs eat, and it iswhere most home-feeding goes wrong.
Home-cooked food can be excellent for a dog. It may sound wonderful at the moment, but in three years you might realise the dog has bad bones, a poor coat or something worse. It's not love or freshness that makes the difference. It's whether the food is balanced.

The dog requires protein, fat, carbohydrate, and about thirty vitamins and minerals in the right amounts and the right proportions. All that has been figured out for commercial dog food. If they worked it out for home recipes, you have it.
This issue is not entirely an unfounded concern: in 2013, veterinary nutritionists at the University of California Davis evaluated two hundred home-cooked dog food recipes they found in books and websites, finding almost all of them lacked at least one nutrient and many lacked several nutrients. Most of the dog food recipes the nutritionists studied came from people who cared a great deal about dogs.

The calcium problem itself is the single most common gap, and it is worth knowingabout rather than just fixing.
Meat is so high in phosphorus and so low in calcium that in a dog that's just eating chicken and rice, with no extra calcium, the body is getting the wrong balance of calcium and phosphorus, and the body sees the imbalance rapidly and starts pulling
calcium out of the bones. In a growing puppy, this condition causes visible skeletal problems within months, whereas in an adult it is silently gradual.
Eggshell powder is the most widely available source at home. A bone meal supplement made for dogs might work too. You cannot guess the amount: too little can cause deficiency, while too much can interfere with absorption of other minerals and harm large-breed puppies. Instead, ask a veterinarian or veterinary nutritionist
how much to feed according to the weight of your dog and the type of diet.

Cook the dog's food separately. Onion and garlic damage a dog's red blood cells, and they are the base of almost everything in an Indian kitchen. Chilli, heavy oil, ghee, salt and masala all cause their own trouble, and a sudden fatty meal is a common cause of pancreatitis.
Leftovers are not a diet. A dog fed the tail end of the family's dinner gets a differentnutrient profile every day, mostly carbohydrate, and no reliable calcium at all.

This rough guide to home-cooked meals for a healthy adult dog includes half the bowl as a cooked protein source (chicken, fish, mutton, eggs or paneer); a quarter of the bowl as a carb source (rice, oats or sweet potato); and a quarter as a vegetable source (pumpkin, carrot, beans, lauki or spinach). To that, add a calcium
source like ground eggshells and an omega-3 source like fish oil, and a canine multivitamin and mineral supplement.
These guidelines should act as a starting point to discuss with your vet, as these amounts vary depending on the weight, age, and activity level of your dog and the
rest of the bowl you're feeding.

Puppies, especially large-breed puppies, where calcium and growth rate are genuinely delicate. Pregnant and nursing dogs. And any dog with kidney disease, liver disease, pancreatitis or diagnosed food allergies, where the diet is treatment and the numbers matter precisely. In these cases, ask for a recipe formulated for your dog rather than adapting one from the internet.

Home cooking doesn't save time and can be more expensive. Cook ahead for twoto three days, refrigerate what will be used within that time frame, and freeze therest. Be mindful of hygiene, cooked food spoils quickly in the Indian heat. Graduallyadopt the new diet over seven to 10 days, instead of overnight.
Many owners find that a good compromise is to use a quality commercial food asthe base and then top it with fresh home-cooked food, which provides theadvantages of variety and freshness without the full burden of balancing everynutrient in the diet.

Weigh the dog monthly and write it down. Watch the stools, which should be firmand consistent. Watch the coat, the energy and the skin. And ask for blood workonce a year, because the deficiencies that matter most are the ones you cannot see from across the room.

Only if it is balanced. A well-formulated home diet is excellent, an unbalanced one is worse than ordinary commercial food.

Not long term. It is a short-term bland diet for an upset stomach, not a complete diet, and it has almost no calcium.

Yes, cooked. They are a reliable protein source, and the shell, dried and powdered, is a common calcium source once the amount is worked out properly.