[aimee]

Hi Kristin,

My dogs primarily eat commercial pet food along with some home cooked. The home cooked I add is primarily vegetables… all the colors of the rainbow, along with some lean meat. Primarily the home cooked is from my dinners but occasionally I’ll steam and puree large batches of veggies and cook meats specifically for them and freeze it to use as needed.

In regards to vets recommending consults if you are home cooking, I think all vets have a duty to recommend that the diet be evaluated to ensure the needs are being met. In fact I’d think they open themselves up to malpractice if they don’t make that recommendation. Similarly, if raw feeding, they have a duty to inform of the parasite and infectious disease risk. This is needed not only for the health of the patient but also extends to public health. Vets won’t get in trouble with AVMA, that has nothing to do with it, but they can lose their license and a huge chunk of change if they are sued if a person in the home comes down with illness traced back to the dog’s raw diet and it isn’t documented in the record that they advised against it. In fact just had a conversation about this at the vet. The CDC was involved, there was an outbreak of Salmonella in the household, 3 children were ill. Same strain in the raw food as in the dog’s poop as in the children. Thankful he had it documented in the record that he discussed risk with owners and advised against raw food.