K9 Food Balancer - Helping people make healthy food for special needs dogs
The quick and healthy solution for homemade "cooked" dog foods. Offering specialty formulas and nutrition tips. We are here to help with all of your homemade dog food needs.
K9 Food Balancer DIY Kits
About K9 Food Balancer
Make it yourself with confidence. K9 Food Balancer is the perfect solution for making nutritionally balanced, homemade dog food at a fraction of the cost and time that it would take to make it from scratch.
Paws Cafe has been making pet foods since 2007. We have a wealth of knowledge about the types of disorders many dogs encounter and we know how our whole food diets effect positive changes to their health. We get frequent requests to ship our fresh Paws Custom Pet Food diets across the US but as you might expect, this option can be expensive. We developed K9 Food Balancer as an economical alternative. The kits are a simple “add meat & water” homemade dog food solution that you can make in less than 30 minutes. Each kit includes the instructions, diced vegetables, supplements, and excellent customer service should you need any help along the way. Multi-kit discounts are built into our pricing so you can save money by buying in volume.
New Customer? Trial one of our kits. Limit 1 per customer.
K9 Food Balancer takes the worry and work out of making healthy homemade dog food!
Order your trial kit today for just $39.95. Shipping is always free.
About Paws Custom Pet Foods
Paws Custom Pet Foods are whole food "cooked" diets designed for dogs. These diets come frozen and are shipped from our Darby Montana kitchen.
Whether you feed your dog one of our core, specialized or K9 Food Balancer diets, you can feel good knowing that we use only the highest quality ingredients available. There are no grains, fillers, common allergens, preservatives, ground bones, or poor quality meat bi-products. We use all-natural USDA and free range meats, non-gmo and organic veggies, and premium human grade supplements to create the healthiest pet foods possible.
Our products are formulated to meet the nutrient requirements recommended by AAFCO and the NAS - Nutrient Requirements of Dog & Cats. Feeding Paws Custom Pet Foods gives your dog the best nutrition available today.

Selecting the right food for your dog
Why feed your dog highly processed bi-products; especially in times of need? Whether you make it yourself with K9 Food Balancer or you choose from our frozen Paws Custom Pet Foods diets, there are several options to meet your dogs unique needs.
1) The Healthy Dog or Core Paws Formula is a moderate 40% protein diet with a full mix of healthy vegetables. This is a great staple diet for all healthy dogs; including puppies.
2) The Ultra Limited Ingredient Formula is also a moderate 40% protein diet only with fewer vegetables. It was designed for dogs with dietary allergies or food intolerance and can be made with the meat of your choice.
3) The Low Protein Formula is made with the same care and ingredients as our Core and Healthy Dog formula only we use less protein in this formula; approx 25% depending on which meat you select. This diet is designed for dogs with mild to moderate liver or kidney disease, or pancreatitis where overall fat consumption must be limited.
4) The Low Oxalate Formula is a low protein, low oxalate diet. Lowering dietary oxalates is critical in the prevention of oxalate stones; especially in the breeds that are genetically predisposed to forming them such as the Poodle, Llasa Apso, Schnauzer, Yorkshire Terrier, Shih Tzu and Bishon's.
5) The Low Purine Formula is a low protein, low purine diet designed for breeds that are genetically predisposed to uric acid stone formation. Dalmatians and Bulldogs are the most common breeds with this genetic condition.
Still not sure? No worries, just email shelly@cooking4canines.com
Paws Fresh Food Options
What makes our diets better
Truly Fresh - Made to Order
Our foods really are fresh made. We don't maintain large freezers of stale or freezer burnt inventory to fill months or years worth of orders. Our foods are made fresh every month to fill recurring orders and to retain a small amount of on-hand inventory should someone new place an order through our website.
Quality Protein Based Diets:
Our diets contain healthy amounts of quality muscle meat for protein. This is the same meat you would feed your human family. Your dogs health can benefit greatly from this, saving you thousands in health related care over their lifetime. It's the single most important ingredient in your dogs diet to get right.
Other pet foods contain poorly digestible meat meal, or they contain the minimum amounts of meat in order to claim AAFCO compliance, or they contain unregulated bi-products that may include substances unfit for human consumption. The fact is, they may contain protein sources that you don't consider "meat" at all. The balance of their diet is then made up of large amounts of empty carbohydrates to compensate for the lack of nutritionally dense protein calories. This is common practice for commercial dog food and it's ultimately destroying the health of way too many dogs today.
Essential Fatty Acids:
Commercial dog foods are frequently deficient in Linoleic Acid (LA) and therefore fail to meet the basic requirements for optimal health; regardless of protein type. That's because the richest sources of this fatty acid are vegetable oils. We add organic hemp seed oil to ensure that proper levels of this fatty acid are included in all of our foods. Hemp seed oil is far superior to most other vegetable oils as it contains proportionally correct amounts of Omegas 3's and 6's, natural vitamin E, a full range of amino acids and several of the essential minerals our dogs need. It does not contain CBD or THC. While Omega 3 isn't considered an essential nutrient for dogs, we feel that it's abundantly necessary for long term joint health and cancer prevention.
Essential Minerals:
Organic kelp and calcium citrate is added to our supplement mix to meet your dogs essential mineral needs. Calcium citrate is particularly beneficial when dealing with dogs that form kidney and bladder stones as the "citrate" reduces the amount of calcium in a dogs urine. Most commercial dog foods use calcium carbonate which is poorly absorbed and may contribute to stone formation and bone spurs.
Vitamins:
All of our diets include supplemental Vitamin E. Vitamin E exists in some meats, vegetables and our added hemp seed oil, but to ensure adequate levels are met, more is added to our dog foods. There are surprisingly few foods that contain measurable amounts of vitamin D so vitamin D3 is also supplemented in our diets. These two vitamins are commonly overlooked in premix and homemade diets. B vitamins are also added to ensure adequate amounts of these essential and beneficial nutrients. B vitamins vary considerably by meat type so this addition ensures all bases are covered. We also include Taurine to our diets. While taurine is not considered an essential nutrient for dogs, there are certain types of meats that contain very little, if any taurine. By including this, we are simply ensuring that none of our diets are ever deficient in this heart healthy amino acid.
We pride ourselves on building lasting relationships with our clients. You can meet a few of them on the Happy Customers page at the top of our site.

About Us
Paws Cafe Corp was established in 2007 by Shelly Christensen. We started as a small custom pet food kitchen in the retail district of Redmond, Washington. Being one of the very first "whole food" pet food manufacturers in the US, our foods and our level of service heavily influenced this industry. Many have tried to copy us over the years but very few have come close to our quality of product or our commitment to service; even today in a much larger competitive market. We've always focused on educating our clients on the best possible diet for "their dogs or cats" and then we offer the best options for their lifestyle to help make that happen. Today our company has grown into a larger family run operation. We service thousands of clients throughout the US from our ranch near Darby, Montana .
When we aren't making dog or cat food, we're usually roaming the mountains or rivers near home with our three awesome pups! ~ Goldie (7), Bentley (12) & Oliver (13)
We hope to hear from you soon -
Shelly & John Christensen