Our Story….

Like many others, I found myself out of work when the COVID-19 virus shut down our nation. Now all of the sudden I was home full time and I had A LOT of time on my hands! At first, I took advantage of the opportunity to work on home improvement projects. Then I started to focus on things that always got overlooked due to being too busy working. 

This is when I really started to focus on our dog, Duke. Duke is a 10 year old lab mix who we adopted when he was 6 weeks old. To say Duke is spoiled is an understatement. 

Duke has had chronic ear infections in his right ear on and off for about 2 years. Duke is an inside dog and doesn’t go in the water. Every time he would get an infection we would take him to the veterinarian to be treated with antibiotics and then a couple months later, we would repeat the same process again: back to the veterinarian, his right ear infected again and more antibiotics. 

With unlimited time on my hands, I started researching like crazy. I was determined to find out what was causing these infections. How could we prevent Duke from getting ear infections? The one thing in all my research I found over and over again that I never thought of but seemed so simple was ALLERGIES! How could allergies be causing my dog’s ear infections? What I was even more perplexed about was the 3 most common allergies for all dogs were – CHICKEN! BEEF! LAMB! What is in every single dog food? Either chicken, beef or lamb! 

I decided I was going to take chicken, beef and lamb completely out of Duke’s diet and see if it made a difference. Easier said than done. I went to pet store after pet store reading the ingredients on at least 25 different dog foods. I only found one kind that didn’t have any chicken, beef or lamb ingredients or by-products. It was a salmon flavored dog food and Duke hated it. He went 3 days and wouldn’t touch his food. I tried mixing it with rice, I tried mixing it with water to make it soft, but he wanted nothing to do with it. Since I wasn’t going to let my poor dog go hungry, I got the idea that maybe I could make his food. 

Back to the drawing board I went to research homemade dog food. My husband thought I was crazy at first. I did a lot of researching on what vitamins, minerals, proteins and carbohydrates dogs require in their diet. I researched the types of vegetables that were safe for dogs to eat and that contained all the vitamins and minerals that dogs need. Once I came up with a recipe that wouldn’t be 

too difficult to make and checked off all the boxes of what dogs need in their diet, I took my recipe to Duke’s veterinarian to ensure that all the ingredients were safe, nutritious, and included everything a dog needed in their diet. Duke’s veterinarian and I went through the ingredients in my recipe. He was very impressed with the recipe that I came up with and said it had everything a dog needs on a daily basis. I asked him if there was anything else I needed to add or anything I needed to eliminate but he said he would leave it exactly as it is. I’m not going to lie, I was pretty impressed with myself that through my research I was able to come up with the perfect recipe that was endorsed by our veterinarian. 

Next was the real test, would Duke like the food? Would this food make any difference? The answer is YES and YES. Duke absolutely LOVES the food! So much so that Duke wakes me up every morning right at 7:00 AM just to eat and when it is getting close to 5:00 PM he just stands by the refrigerator until I open it and take his food out! Since Duke has been on this food, his digestive track is completely regulated, he doesn’t itch at all, he has not had a single ear infection and he even acts younger! He is more energetic and playful. We took Duke to the veterinarian for a routine check and he was beyond impressed with how much better Duke looks, how he acts and his overall health. He was thrilled how well Duke was doing on the homemade food. 

I kept thinking, look how much this food has improved Duke’s health, how much he loves it and how much better he feels – why shouldn’t I help more dogs? 

And that is how Duke’s Homemade Dog Food, LLC was born.