Our dog was always licking it's feet and to eliminate the possibility of it being caused by a food allergy I starting cooking food for her.

I started with just meat and vegetables for a while then added a grain of some kind. I have been doing this for a few months now.

The issue I am having is the amount to feed. I looked at the Iams website and looked at how many calories a day their food would be for a dog this size and that's how many calories I have been feeding.

Last night we shaved down the dog (it's a Shih Tzu) and thought see looked smaller so we weighed her and found she is three pounds less than the last time we weighed her. She was over weight and even now isn't skinny but I am thinking I should be feeding more. It's hard to say how much she really has lost because we cut a ton of hair off too but when we got her she was 19 pounds and had pretty short hair.

I should probably just go back to the dog food but homemade seems better and I know the dog likes it better.

The Shih Tzu my mom had was a small dog inside of big hair. Sorry I don't remember the weight of the dog.

Here's the breed standard.

According to that 16lbs is considered the top end of the weight for standard. Is your dog physically larger that 19lbs would be good?

Sure. We also call it "leftovers" and "bones".

I "cook" for one of our cats regularly. Well, the cooking of a college student: open can of tuna, put tuna on plate, give plate to cat who inhales it.

Matt, you said you add grain to the food. I was under the impression that grains weren't that great. Is that not true for dogs? For cats, there's all sorts of grain-free foods (that cost way more!), and we get the cheapest one of those. I don't know anything about dog food, though...

Other than tuna (which only one cat eats), our cats don't eat anything but their dry food. One of them even tries to cover up wet food and tuna, thinking it's...something else Fortunately I've been told that if they drink enough water (they do), this isn't much of an issue.

I always add some brown rice and bran when I make food for one of my dogs. In the wild a dog will eat anything. However, I never add any wheat or corn-based ingredients as they're used simply as filler in many commercial foods.

One very important item to note, read online and also mentioned by a retired vet friend, is to make sure you are adding vitamins/minerals to the food you make, because the ingredients you're using may not contain enough of what your dog will require.

Bone meal, and fish oil come highly recommended. If you're making a batch of food, freeze it, don't just keep it in the fridge if it's supposed to last more than 3 or 4 days.

Oh and from the vet friend, garlic is good, onions not.

I think our dog is a large Shih tzu but I have seen several others that are the same size. She still doesn't look skinny it's hard to tell because we don't keep the hair the same all the time. Now it's really short.

I have been hearing whole grains are good like brown rice or barley. I have been using brown rice, barley, or lentils. I have been giving fish oil every day and I am going to get some of this stuff too.

Human marketed tuna can be bad for a cat. For one thing, it doesn't include taurine which a lack of can cause cats to go blind (which is why a diet of dog food for cats is bad, they don't include taurine). It doesn't have enough vitamin E, which can lead to all kinds of problems when combined with the fats in tuna.

Chicken of the Sea and others is fine for a cat as a treat occasionally, but you should really feed your cat tuna-flavored wet food instead of people food.

No, it's nothing more than a treat. We don't give it to her every day, more like once every 2-5 weeks.

That is ok then I'm pretty sure my cats love Tuna more than they love life itself.

I provide canned food for my cat when she fails to catch something outdoors, but she's getting pretty good at fending for herself and just using us as a warm place to sleep.

I would never cook food for a cat though - they are healthier with raw food in most cases, according to my vet neighbour.

I think maybe "prepare" is a better word than "cook" - most of what I put into the dog food is raw. Not the rice though.

How did you figure out much to feed?

I didn't really figure it out. I use the food in addition to dried kibble from Fromm for one of my dogs, the picky one. He's a shitzu-poodle cross of about 15lbs and doesn't eat very much. When I feed only the food I make, I give him about a half cup twice per day. I just made sure I had a decent balance of meat and vegetables in there along with the fish oil and vitamins which I added at feeding time.

His weight has never really shifted so I figured it was enough. Right now he's back on Fromm since he's being less picky. The next time I make food I'm going to try putting my other dog on it exclusively for that batch. He's a 38lbs basset-cross that will inhale anything and could stand to lose some weight. I think 32lbs would be good for him.