Dog Food Consultations are offered on Wednesday, Thursday 10a and 11am PST. If you need another day/time please feel free to reach out and I can try to accommodate you.
Dog Food Nutritional Consultation & Meal Plan
When you schedule a Dog Food Nutritional Consultation, you will receive a detailed nutritional questionnaire about your dog. This questionnaire is about 5 pages long and will ask you detailed questions about your dog including:
- Age
- Breed
- Weight, Body Condition
- Activity Level
- Stools Consistency, Texture, Frequency
- Skin / Coat Health
- Medical Conditions, recent bloodwork, and diagnostics
- Current Diet, how it is offered, how much is offered
- For Homemade Recipes – *Send me your recipe for an analysis of the current recipe, with feedback and a draft of a new recipe.
- Any treats, chews, or additions
- Training/Enrichment/Lifestyle
- All supplements and medications.
The idea of this questionnaire is to not only discover what your dog’s unique nutritional needs are – but evaluate if the current diet you are feeding, and overall meal plan meet those nutritional needs.
I wanted to incorporate more fresh food into Freja’s diet, but our first venture didn’t go according to plan. Nikki was so helpful explaining why the recipes I chose probably didn’t work, and helping me understand what to look for in a food, and going through an extensive amount of options with me. I was blown away by just how knowledgeable she was! I feel awesome now that we have a well thought out plan for Freja, and it’s a relief knowing that we can go to Nikki in the future if we need more guidance and things change (i.e. senior diet changes).
– Samantha & Freja
During our Dog Food Consultation, We Can Discuss:
Each consultation is 45 minutes long and can cover a wide range of topics depending on your preferences.
- Current diet, and where we can improve to hit health goals
- Fresh food and homemade diet options
- Diet options for different medical diseases and conditions
- Nutritional needs based on activity level, age (puppy, adult, senior), or medical conditions
- Transitioning onto a fresh food diet
- How to incorporate fresh food into kibbled diet
- Weight maintenance or weight loss goals
- Boredom, stress and enrichment and how diet can influence moods
For Dogs with Medical Conditions
You must have your veterinarian fill out a veterinary referral form prior to your pet’s consultation.
Dog Food Recipe Formulation Services:
During the consultation, if appropriate I can create a draft of a homemade dog food recipe for your pup. Typically I ask that you then make sure you can do these three things prior to going forward with the final weekly meal plan and formulation.
1. source the ingredients
2. your pup tolerates /enjoys the recipe at 10% or less of their diet
3. your veterinarian approves the recipe
I do this so we can make any edits prior to finalizing a meal plan (if you can’t find certain ingredients you thought you could, or if your vet has additional feedback or requests). In addition, this allows you to make sure you want to cook for your dog (rather than purchasing a premade food) – as DIY is not for everyone.
I can create complete and balanced dog food recipes for:
- Healthy Pets of Different Activity Levels
- Healthy Senior Dogs
- Weight Loss or Weight Gain
- Limited Ingredient Recipes for Food Elimination Trials or Food Allergies
- Low Fat Recipes for Dogs with Fat Intolerance
- High Fiber Recipes to help with Satiety or Fiber-responsive loose stools
- Vegetarian Dog Food Recipes for Dogs with Protein Allergies
My Limitations:
Though I am a Registered Veterinary Technician and do have knowledge of nutritional considerations for dogs with different diseases and conditions – I am not a veterinarian or a board-certified veterinary nutritionist. Thus I do have some limitations of the types of diets that I can formulate.
If your dog is suffering from a disease state – I can direct you toward premade diet options, or DIY premade recipes, but I cannot formulate recipes for animals with: kidney disease, liver disease, or urinary stones.
I also cannot create recipes for puppies younger than 1 year of age, or dogs over 100 lbs. However, I can direct you toward homemade and fresh food options that would be appropriate.
Finally, I do not create diets with high legume content – or vegan dog food recipes. This is largely due to current concerns with DCM, and incomplete research in this area.
Questions about the consultation?
Contact me, and send me an email so we can discuss your options!