Feeding two Siberian Huskies –
Both Cabela and Ravyn grew up eating dried food. The first day I got them home I was all excited about giving them their first meal. I poured the dried food that I was told to feed them into their shinny new bowls, then stood back and waited for them to dive into their first meal in their new home. They walked up to their bowls, looked into the bowls and quickly backed away. With an indignant look on their faces they both looked at me and made it very clear, “We have no intention of eating that crap. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever!”
This went on for several days before I started to get really nervous that they were going to starve themselves to death. So, I decided to cook them a fresh meal and see if maybe they would eat that. I went out and got some lean ground sirloin, brown rice, kale and a red pepper. I stir fried the sirloin, steamed the rice and vegetables and mixed it all together in their shiny new bowls. I stepped back and watched…. They went up to their bowls, looked in….. and proceeded to devour every single drop of food. They looked up at me as if to say, “now we’re talking old man, you keep this up and were going to get along real well.”
And so, on that day I started cooking all their meals. Meal time in our house quickly became a really fun time together. Cabela and Ravyn, on every single meal, spend their time in the kitchen watching me cook. The closer it gets to the food going into their bowls, the more they start to howl and get excited. My decision was I’d keep cooking for them as long as they kept up their excitement about their meals.
Well, almost 3 years and 2,060 meals later, they have never lost their excitement about me cooking for them and I have never lost my excitement to cook for them. Over time Cabela and Ravyn have had a variety of meals ranging from ground sirloin, brown rice and kale to fresh pan seared salmon, ground turkey, and occasionally chicken. I have found they don’t do really well with the chicken though. It seems to break Ravyn out in fits of nose and feet scratching. If I stick to very low fat beef they seem to have much less issues. On some days the duo will get a break from beef and go vegetarian. I substitute garbanzo beans for the beef. I steam the low sodium beans with the rice and vegetables, then crush the beans in their bowls to make it easier to digest. This does not seem to discourage their excitement about my cooking and they dive right in leaving only a shiny stainless bowl behind.
Cabela and Ravyn eat twice a day, once at 8 AM and once at 4 PM. For lunch they split a fresh peeled carrot and for a before bedtime treat they split a fresh peeled apple. Sometimes I add a tablespoon of frozen vanilla yogurt with the apple but I try to keep this to occasionally as dogs cannot digest dairy products.
On camping trips we cook his & her’s’ burgers. And when the old man finds himself splurging on a restaurant meal, Cabela & Ravyn usually end up with a slice of bacon each.