As more owners elect to home prepare food for their dogs and cats, more books on the topic are appearing. Barker's Grub: Easy, Wholesome Home Cooking for Your Dog follows a common approach: a foreword by a veterinarian; an introduction detailing the author's experience with her own dog; a chapter criticizing processed dog food; and then onto what dog food should be, basic nutritional information, and recipes for variety and special medical conditions.
Edalati has included a section on breed-specific nutritional requirements. This contains many inaccurate statements; for example, that beagles and pugs require a diet high in fats; that bichon frises require a high-fat diet with sulfates and limestone; that borzois require high fiber, and so on. Miniature schnauzers, westies and wheaton terriers, 3e breeds frequently afflicted with problems requiring specialized diets, were not mentioned.
Many of the recipes call for the meat to be boiled and the broth to be saved for future use. Boiling depletes the nutrients more than any other cooking method, and people don't really want to save the broth. She approaches dogs as omnivores rather than carnivores and recommends diets relatively low in protein – a nutritional approach in line with dry dog foods and opposite to informed home-prepared diet advocates.
The author provides all the information needed for the preparation and feeding of numerous diets for healthy dogs. She suggests a 4-week transition period to convert a dog from commercial dog food to home-prepared food by using 4 different diets. In our practice, we are frequently recommending home-prepared diets, but we find that a 1-week conversion and 2 to 3 variations work very well. Using the KISS test, this book fails.
Although it's easy to criticize details in books on home-prepared foods, what is important is whether we, as veterinarians, can learn from, and recommend them, to owners. I cannot recommend this one, as it contains too many inaccurate concepts, too many choices and inadequate supplement information.
There are a number of books available that provide nutritionally valid information that are user friendly for both veterinarians and owners, such as those by Pitcairn, Zucker, Schultze, and Strombeck.