Cooking for Our Toothless Dog

Our 7 year old Havanese dog has had nearly all her teeth removed, except for some front teeth. This was due to a combination of genetics and gum disease that resulted in many root abscesses. She is home now, recovering, but now we are wondering what to feed her? Obviously wet food, but should it be store bought canned wet food, or home made?

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Our Havanese Dog

The Havanese, according to Wikipedia, is a bichon-type dog that is recognized as the national dog of Cuba. The breed was developed from the now extinct Blanquito de la Habana, and the Blanquito, itself a descendent of the extinct Bichón Tenerife.

These dogs really are a one-person, velcro dog that make great companions, and who will serve you well as a doorbell. They are devoted, cute, funny, and truly adore the person they attach to. They are also very smart, stubborn, anxious when left alone, and get hard-fixed to a regular daily routine; daylight savings time be damned!

We acquired our Havanese, Maggie, at age 5 from a breeder who had been using her for that task. In fact, the breeder boasted that the last recent litter she had was 11 puppies (normal is 1-8). It seems she was primarily used for breeding, and later we realized that the breeder was too secretive about her history. Because, in short, we had to start from scratch to teach her everything, like how to play (still in progress), how to let us touch her, and how she needed to inform us she needed to go to the bathroom. As a result, including many other issues, we call her a rescue:

• Breeder was secrative about her history
  • We were not allowed access to her medical records
  • When we got her she still had sutures in her belly for some unknown reason
  • She also had terrible teeth that called for a large number of extractions within months of her life with us
• Maggie did not like being touched at all and would nip
• Was not comfortable on leash
• Had to learn how to use stairs
• Would isolate herself and not interact with us or Charlie the goldendoodle
• Was easily startled by urban sights and sounds

Unfortunately, Havanese (and other toy breeds) are more likely than other dogs to have teeth and gum problems no matter what. Usually, it starts with tartar build-up on the teeth, and then will progress to gum infections that burrow down to the teeth roots. This infection will eventually cause the loss of teeth, and if not treated, may put the dog in danger of damaging kidneys, liver, heart, and joints. This type of infection can also shorten their lives by up to 3 years (1).

Well we have had her in our lives for 4 years now, and she has had two dental visits resulting in only a few teeth left in front. Meaning that she can no longer chew food, though she tries.

Dental Problems + Mitigation

Problems

AHCFargo writes that canine dental disease is the most common chronic problem, effecting 80% of all dogs by age two. After a long time of living with pets, humans now know that there are categories of dogs that are more prone to dental problems:

• Small breeds
  • Commonly, it is said that the smaller the dog, the higher the risk of periodontal disease
  • Small dogs are more likely to have stinky breath too, due to that dental disease
• Toy breeds
  • Yorkies, Maltese, Poodles, Havanese, etc. have teeth issues
• Brachycephalics breeds
  • So do Boxers, Bulldogs, French Bulldogs, and Shih Tzus, etc.
• Dogs with narrow skull + mouths (short muzzles)
  • Small mouths and crowded teeth means more hidden places for bacteria, plaque, and tartar to grow 
  • Typically this includes Greyhounds, Whippets, and other sighthounds; and Dachshunds or Collies
• Some large dog breeds
  • Larger dogs may have gingival hyperplasia, a disorder caused by overgrown gums
  • Likely breeds for problems include Boxers, Great Danes, and Mastiffs

Mitigation

IHeartDogs writes: Dental health is an important part of your dog’s overall wellness and should not be overlooked. So the ways to keep them clean, that we followed, were AKC approved:

• Brush their teeth with doggie toothpaste
• Provide dental chews
• Spritz dog dental spray
• Feed quality food
• Offer up a safe and soft chew toy for your dog to help clean teeth and massage gums
• Schedule annual visits at the doggy dentist for a cleaning and checkup

But even with all this, your dog can loose teeth due to disease,

The Nutritional Concern of Homemade

There are a few concerns I had at the beginning. First, how much do I feed my dog? She has been on 1/4C kibble twice a day with cooked meat added as toppings, so how is that converted to all fresh homemade food?. Second, how do I make sure she is getting all the nutrients she needs? Third, what should the food look like and how it should be cooked for a dog with no teeth?

Many sites are clear, that home made dog food is often nutritionally lacking.

• Unfortunately, too often, homemade food lacks key nutrients. When researchers from the University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine performed a nutritional evaluation of 200 homemade dog food recipes, they discovered that most were missing key nutrients (1).

Further, Jennifer Larsen, an associate professor of clinical nutrition at the UC Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital writes, Homemade food is a great option for many pets, but we recommend that owners avoid general recipes from books and the Internet and instead consult with a board-certified veterinary nutritionist.

However, it is not necessary, IMHO, to feed nutritionally complete meals each and every time. We certainly do not eat that way. The point of a good nutritional diet is that, over a set time, you receive all the nutrients your body requires. So mixing it up with the meats, staying in season with your fruits and veggies, changing the small bits of carbs, different fishes, all are good.

I started by watching the UK’s Dog Nutritionist’s 21+ YouTube videos on dog nutrition. His food is a mixture of raw and cooked (or blanched) meat that creates a lumpy meal requiring teeth. All I do differently for Maggie is mush everything for her.

How Much

This is the technical part, full of mathematic algorithms and nutritional requirements. My first concern was how to convert the commercial dry food we were giving her to a “sloppy slushy” food. Is 1/4C of each type of food comparable? Quick answer is not really. The way to convert dry food into a bit of pureed wet food is to compare calories rather than volume, so that we still provide necessary calories and nutrients.

I realized quickly that I needed to first know how many calories we had been feeding Maggie per day, and how much she was given in incidental snacks each day too, so I would know where to start.

Our preferred dry dog food recommended that a 10-25# dog, like our Maggie, should be served 3/4 to 1-2C of their kibble daily. Well, we had fed her 1/4C dry food twice a day, augmented each time with 1-2T of real meat and veggies as a topping, plus snacks like a dental chew, and little meat bits during our daily routine. Her main food was a kibble: Canidae Pure Angus Beef and Barley which has 1664 kcal per pound. So I started with this number.

• Canidae: 1664 calories for one pound of their kibble
  • 1# of this kibble, actually measured out, came to thirteen 1/4C
  • So, 1664 / 13 = 128 calories x 2 servings, or 256 calories in kibble per day
• Dental treat was 26 calories per treat x 1 per day
• Miscellaneous (Zukes and jerky) treats per day ~58 calories
• Total calories 256 + 26 + 58 = 340 calories per day

So using this guesstimate of pounds to cups to calories, Maggie was eating ~340 calories per day minimum.

Nutrition Guideline

I reviewed lots of specs on line (2, 3, 4), and many more on Youtube, and as you imagine they all vary wildly. Some bloggers boast that their dogs are healthy so their diet must be working, others state that their diet is “vet approved”, while others argue that is not good enough, for Vets are usually not “animal nutritionists”. So I took in all these recommendations, plus my cooking knowledge, to come up with this food plan. Here are the nutritional considerations I believe reflect most of what I researched.

• 40-60% muscle meat protein minimum: Mix dark and white meat chicken or turkey, grass fed beef, lamb, or wild meat like venison. Heat denatures protein, so I tend to blanch or lightly cook this meat, although it could be served raw as many recipes show.
• 10-20% organ meat: Any innards, gizzards, heart, liver, tripe, kidney (5), etc., but do not over do this type of meat as they tend to be high in bacteria and metals, so I blanch them or add raw.
• 10-20% fruits + vegetables: Seasonal organic foods such as carrots, spinach, peas, kale, cauliflower, broccoli, green beans, raw cranberries, cooked asparagus, cored raw apples, pomegranate, banana, or raw blueberries. Add cooked mushrooms, not raw.
• 10% baked and boneless fatty fish: Baked or canned without additional oils and seasoning, and choose fatty fish low in mercury. My preference is for canned, or fresh trout, salmon, sardines, herring, catfish, and cod (6, 7).
• 10% carbohydrates maximum: Carbs however, are controversial, with some animal nutritionists saying they are absolutely not needed (8, 9). While not needed, unless the dog is pregnant, it does add nutrition to the meal. I tend to add small portions of: oatmeal, brown rice, quinoa, cooked sweet potato, cooked squash, flax meal, or even barley to soak up any cooking liquid. Some suggest avoiding pasta and bread, or gluten.
• 10% Supplements:
  • If no fish is in the mix, add drops of fatty fish omega oils
  • Cultured plain yogurt (kaffir and non-dairy is ok) with a bit of raw honey to sweeten the yogurt
  • Seeds like sunflower, pumpkin, etc. but make it raw, unsalted, and ground up
  • Supplement with canine nutritional powder if necessary; follow instructions carefully.
  • ~2.5-4.5% fiber: Lots of veggies have fiber, so I include the skins for all veggies and may add psyllium husk. Note, be cautious with psyllium husk and only mix in a minimal amount; it can cause blockage so read up on this supplement and follow directions.
• 5.5% healthy fat: Since Maggie needs softer food, I might heat some of the food in ~2-4T neutral veggie oil, or often add 1-2C bone broth to blanch the food and provide fat.
• Add raw or cooked eggs, including the finely crushed shells from those eggs. I use a coffee grinder to pulverize the dry shells into a powder form and add to the mix (10) for Maggie.

The American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) does not recommend feeding dogs, or cats, a raw meat diet due to the concerns of pathogen or protozoal pathogen transmissions (11, 12). But the meats outlined above can be fully cooked, blanched, or raw if handled properly.

Note: if giving your dogs bones, everyone seems to recommend they be raw, for they are more pliable, and when cooked they are not, often snapping into sharp shards and therefore dangerous. For boned meat, people recommend chicken feet or wings.

Posted Recipes

I have posted a large number of recipe ingredients to mainly show how similar these all are, and how they, more or less, follow the guideline above. For cooking directions go to the sites linked.

Dr. Judy Morgan Pup Loaf

This is prepared like a meat loaf, blended and baked in the oven.

• 3 pounds beef (90% lean)
• 8 ounces beef heart
• 5 ounces beef liver
• 20 ounces chicken gizzards
• 3 cans sardines in water, minus the juice
• 6 ounces mussels (or 3 teaspoons kelp)
• 2 teaspoons ground fresh ginger
• 5 eggs with shell
• 3 ounces red bell pepper
• 5 ounces mixed dark leafy greens (kale, chard, spinach)
• 4 ounces broccoli
• 6 ounces butternut squash
• 3 tablespoons flax seed oil
• 4 ounces cranberries
• 4 ounces Shiitake mushrooms

Northwest Holistic Pet Care 20# Dog

• 8 ounces ground organic turkey thigh
• 2T ground organic turkey organ meat (liver, gizzards, hearts)
• ¼C finely grated organic veggies
• 1t ground raw sunflower seeds
• ½t organic coconut oil
• ½t salmon oil
• 500 mg Calcium Citrate (required)

MSPCA-Angell 15#

These are cooked weights in grams, and amounts of each food ingredient per day for a 15# adult dog. 

• Chicken, dark meat cooked 80grams, 3 wt-oz
• Rice, white, cooked 190 grams, 1 1/3 cups
• Mixed vegetables 15 grams, 1 Tbsp
• Vegetable oil 5 to 10 grams, 1 to 2 tsp
• Supplements to be mixed in the food

The Wildest Slow Cooker

• ¾ to 1 pound cubed, skinless, boneless chicken breast or thighs, or lean beef, turkey, or fish
• 1 to 3 ounces of chicken liver, hearts, gizzards, or another animal liver
• 1 or 2 whole eggs
• 8 ounces of uncooked white or brown rice
• 16 ounces green beans
• Bone meal, 1 teaspoon (about 1,500 mg) per pound of meat (if this meal accounts for more than 10 percent of a dog’s daily diet)
• Water

My Own Food Mixture for Maggie

My Soft Canine Food

I mix it up each time to vary the meat and seasonal veggies/fruit so she receives a mix of nutrients. The end result is a blended lumpy mash she can easily gum and swallow. I also use this food as a topping for Charlie so he does not feel left out. Here is a sample of a quick chicken meal I made and Maggie liked.

• Basic Chicken + Veggies
• Homemade bone broth (in this case chicken) that matches the main meat
• Chicken breasts blanched in the broth ~5-7 minutes
• Add a little bit of quinoa to the hot broth
• Small amount of raw beef liver
• Tin of Trout packed in water
• Added grated large carrots with their greens, unpeeled medium sized zucchini, handful of spinach, raw grated broccoli and some blueberries and cooked sweet potatoes with skin
• Then I blended everything into a thick consistency with soft lumps and mixed well with a small amount of supplements
• If there was liquid left over I added a bit of dry, flat old fashion oatmeal to soak it up
• Finally I dished it into week-sized containers and put in the freezer

Commercial Help

The problem with best guesses, is there is no guarantee we are feeding our dog what she needs. So we asked around, and a friend suggested a company that supports soft-food for dogs, and home cookers. So we ordered some of their lamb and brown rice nutrient powders and omega filled drops to augment our home cooking.

JustFoodForDogs is a company that will provide home-made food, or directions for DIY food. For the DIYers out there they will provide a recipe, along with powder nutrients to add to the food, and omega-drops to assure your dog (or cat) gets everything they need from food.

We used their lamb recipe, and nutrient additions, and found them easy to make. Really, look at all the recipes and you will see patterns start to arise. We focus on organic and seasonal veggies and fruit, bone broth to complement the main meat, mixed organ meats and fatty fish in small quantities, and some whole grains to sop up the liquids.

By the way, in general, our dogs love this change in their diet!

Good luck,

—Patty

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Non-commercial, homemade dog or cat foods are not subject to any state or federal regulations that I am aware of, and no animal-feed authority covers home cooking for pets. But let us be clear, creating a complete and balanced pet food is a very complex task. I have to recommend that you consider consulting with a canine nutritional expert, or your vet’s dietician before moving your dog to a permanent home-made dog food. Believe me when I say dog nutrition is as complicated as human requirements, and it is easy to make a mistake; so if you switch, monitor your dog for any sign of a problem. Remember, I am not an expert in canine nutrition, just a family cook.