There are many simple ways to add fresh and homemade ingredients into your dogs' diet. From adding fresh vegetables like blueberries, and green beans as well as cooked vegetables like pumpkin, squash and carrots you can create an interesting and nutritious meal for your dog. One of the easiest ways to dress that bowl up it to use a wet ingredient that will add lots of flavor and powerful nutrients – Salt free, dog safe bone broth!

Bone broth is an excellent bioavailable source of vitamins, minerals and nitrogen, with potent healing properties. It can help relieve joint and stomach pain and supports the immune system.

Bone broth is also a great after-fasting food for animals recovering from gastrointestinal (GI) irritation or illness. If you have a finicky pet, you can use it as a topper on food. If you have an older pet with a declining appetite, feeding bone broth provides very concentrated nourishment and helps keep the GI tract functioning.

Bone Broth Is a Nutrient-Dense Meal Supplement or Treat

Bone broth is inexpensive to make, easy to prepare and, best of all, incredibly nutritious. When you simmer bones in water overnight (or longer), it allows all the minerals and marrow to leach out into the water, providing your pet with a variety of nutrients in an easily absorbable form, including:

• Calcium, phosphorus and other minerals
• Components of collagen and cartilage
• ilicon and other trace minerals
• Components of bone and bone marrow
• Glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate

The conditionally essential amino acids proline,
glycine and glutamine

The boiled down cartilage and collagen in the broth is excellent for animals with achy joints and may help reduce joint pain and inflammation. Cartilage is also known to support immune system health while the amino acids in bone broth (such as glycine, proline and arginine) fight inflammation.

The minerals in the broth help support bone health, as does the collagen. The gelatin in bone broth may also support muscle growth, making it useful for athletic as well as elderly pets.

Bone broth is also easy to digest and provides excellent support for the gastrointestinal tract. In fact, bone broth provides a highly concentrated source of nutrition for pets that have recently been sick, are elderly or have become finicky eaters.

It’s not a balanced diet so should be a supplement to regular meals, but it works well for a snack or for pets who are refusing to eat. You can also add the broth to your dog’s or cat’s regular meals for added flavor, moisture and nutrition. Freeze it in ice cube trays to make a perfect summer cool-down treat. It will even help your pet detox from the environmental pollutants she encounters on a daily basis.

The liver is the master organ of detoxification. The dog’s liver is under assault daily as the poor dog lies on carpets and floors treated with chemicals, walks on grass that’s been treated and sprayed with poisons, consumes foods with toxic and synthetic ingredients, and suffers through toxic dewormers, flea and tick preventives, drugs, antibiotics, vaccines and more.

The liver was never meant to suffer this onslaught and its capacity to detoxify is limited by the availability of the amino acid glycine. Guess what has tons of glycine? Bone broth!

How to Make Your Own Bone Broth:
It's easier to make bone broth than you might think. Start with the highest quality ingredients you can find, including organic, pastured chicken, beef, or bones. You can use a whole organic chicken (pets will enjoy the meat, too) or look for organic beef thigh bones (soup bones).

Fill your pot with pure water and add the bones plus a splash of organic apple cider vinegar. Acetic acid (vinegar) helps leech the minerals from the bones into the stockpot water. Let the mixture simmer on the stove for up to 4.5 hours, until the meat is falling off the bone and you can remove it (and any skin) from the pot.

Return the broth (including the bones) to the stove, add another splash of vinegar, and continue simmering for another 24 hours to be sure all the nutrition is pulled from the bones.

After 24 hours, run the broth through a strainer to remove the cooked bones and bone fragments. You can either discard these or run them through a food processor and add them back into the broth. With very little effort on your part, you'll have a superfood that will provide your pet with comfort and nutrition year-round (and as a bonus, you can eat it too)!

From something as easy as pouring some broth into an ice cube tray, freeze it, and offering your dog bone broth popsicles as a delicious, nutritious treat or making that dry bowl of food more interesting both dogs and cats love bone broth. If you are not the cooking type there are amazing freeze-dried shelf stable options, as well as pre made frozen options to bring bone broth into your pet meal time.