Here’s another great product from Know Better Pet Food company: U-stew for dogs!
This is perfect for people who don’t want to feed raw but still want the benefits of a good home-prepared diet.
We’d recommend this for people and pets who are immune-compromised, because they should be extra cautious about possible salmonella problems. Also, if you’ve been wanting to go raw but haven’t yet gotten the courage to, U-Stew is a good alternative!
For this review, we’ve enlisted The Father’s dog, Jackie! This is Jackie:
Dad was looking for a dog and he preferred big, mixed-breed dogs because he’d grown up with many. And poor Jackie needed a home really badly, so we took him in!
Onward to making dinner for Jackie!
We are going to make the entire packet of U-Stew for him (makes up to approximately 2.7kg of food, excluding vegetables).
Three cups of water!
One cup of U-Stew (there will be a bit left over).
Mix mix mix! The mixture will turn slightly gelatinous if you leave it alone–that’s perfectly normal.
Check to see if pooch is still with you…yes. Still there! But of course!
Now to get the vegetables done. We’ve chosen peas and carrots for Jackie’s stew this time round.
The baby carrots were still a little on the big side and we wanted the vege to cook quickly, so I had to chop them up.
Dogs are not obligate carnivores and they can eat some vegetables–and should! However, grains such as wheat and soy and corn are a no-no.
Jackie & a (bigger) baby carrot.
We’ve decided to steam our ingredients because steaming keeps the nutrients intact more than boiling, or stir-frying. We steamed the peas and carrots for about 10 minutes–that’s when they started turning mushy. Mushy’s good! Easier to digest, and it’s also easier to trick dogs who won’t eat peas or carrots into downing some.
We chose to make beef stew for Jackie, so here are our slabs of beef.
Washing the beef with Jackie dogging every step. This pooch is seriously food-driven. Look at his furious tail-wagging!
Chopping up the meat while the peas and carrots cooked! This was a breeze because Jackie’s a mid-sized dog (20kg) and honestly I didn’t really have to chop up the cubes because he can easily eat them anyway. But since we chopped the cubes for the cats to make Better In The Raw cat food for them, might as well…just this once…
Steam away! This step took us 20min. Be careful not to overcook the meat into shoe leather. Your dog will probably still eat the overcooked meat, but boiling the meat into leather is not the best way to preserve nutrients 😉
TADA! All lined up ready for mixing!
First the peas…
Then the carrots… I don’t particularly like carrots myself, but these look awesomely yummy!
MIX!
Mixing’s a breeze if you use a large enough pot, so do be sure to use a bigger container. This is my dad’s wok!
By this step you should be feeling hungry. If you are, you’re doing it right hehe 😛
After the stew has cooled sufficiently for storage, you can bag them up!
A dog about Jackie’s size should eat about 450 grams (please adjust according to your dog’s needs), and we got about 7 bags in all. Ever since we started feeding him U-stew (because Dad was uncomfortable with feeding him raw then) he shed and scratched less…and the best part was watching him at dinner time! He just got SO HAPPY! Now he is already normally enthusiastic at dinner time, but this new level of joy is something to behold! If he could balance on his hindlegs to get a better sniff of the bowl of stew, he would. This pooch knows what good stuff is haha!
Time to serve dinner!
LOOK AT MY BEAUTIFUL STEW. JUST–JUST LOOK AT IT! *tears of joy* I feel like such an accomplished chef! Thank you Know Better Pet Food Company!
Jackie thanks the lovely Know Better Pet Food folks too!
A before-dinner ritual that Jackie’s a pro at. He’s such a smart dog that it didn’t take him 10 minutes to learn this easy-peasy trick!
This has also become very useful when we take him out for walks and he finds something especially interesting (gross), or if a stray cat/squirrel dashes across his path.
Here’s a video of Jackie and his tantalizing beef stew dinner!
After-dinner, Jackie helps with cleaning up by licking the scoops. 😛 If only he could do the wash-up too…
Good dog, Jackie! Good dog!
…
U-STEW FOR DOGS is now available @ TRE! Please drop us an email or SMS us! Retailers are welcome as well 😉
Categories: Better In The RAW, Raw-diet supplements, The Raw Explorer, Uncategorized
The Raw Explorer 
Instead of steaming frozen peas and carrots, simply waiting for the veg to defrost completely works too, so will just blending the veggies. The whole point is to break down the cellulose in veg. In general, freezing, cooking and blending will all work. =)
ideas on what other vegs are good for dogs?
Instead of what veg are good for dogs, how about this, apart from the ones below, most of the others are good. =)
Try not to (or rather DON’T) feed:
– corn
– onions (cause anaemia)
– nightshade family vegetables like tomatoes, brinjals, peppers (cause poisoning, especially the leaves)
Feed little:
– garlic (a very little bit of garlic helps with tick prevention, but too much can cause anaemia too, if you are concerned, give other stuff like apple cider vinegar for tick prevention instead)
– broccoli and other cruciferous veg (too much can affect thyroid function)
– carrots (not all dogs can digest carrots. In fact, many can’t; in fact, my Oreo is one of them and I can always count on it to find very beautifully orange dotted poo the next day after she’s fed even a tiny cube of carrot. -.-“)
– kelp
Feel free to feed more (more = an ice cube sized blended amount/a tablespoonful for a big dog, which is still very little compared to our human idea of a balanced meal):
– green leafy vegetables
– peas
– sprouts (eg. alfalfa, other sprouted seeds)
Vegetables that MUST be fed cooked:
– beans
– starchy vegetables (eg. sweet potato)
Some fruit (eg. apple, banana, coconut, blueberries, papaya, melon) is good for dogs too.
My favourite miracle veg: Pumpkin! (Good for all digestive issues, constipation and diarrhoea)
Do note, it’s best not to feed fruit and/or veg at the same time as meat because of the different rate of digestion.
thanks for the comprehensive reply!