Pet-alicious chow: Woman makes people food for pets

By Liz Barry | http://www.newsadvance.com/

Published: May 27, 2008

Dee Finch feeds chunks of boiled chicken into the top of a food grinder. With nostrils flaring, four dogs at her feet watch, poised to pounce on any morsel that drops to the floor.

Finch works methodically. She must grind 180 pounds of chicken before the day is done. When the batch is ground, she mixes it with oatmeal and divides the sticky mush into 1-pound containers.

The chicken/oatmeal combination is one of five FDA-approved recipes that Finch created for PeopleFood for Dogs, a business she started five years ago.

An alternative to highly processed dog food, Finch’s chicken-based recipes include ingredients like mixed vegetables, rice and sweet potato, and sell for between $2.25 and $2.45 per pound at Fresh Air in Lynchburg and the Canine Bath Shop in Bedford.

Finch, who lives in Bedford, started PeopleFood for Dogs after her vet directed her to feed her dogs chicken and rice when sick.

“I knew there were a million people out there doing this and hating it.”

The food is sold in frozen packages for the pet owners’ convenience.

Dr. Regina Schwabe, a veterinarian at Pamplin Animal Wellness Services, says the conventional reason for feeding a dog chicken and rice is to relieve diarrhea, but she also recommends it for animals healing from surgery or to supplement a kibble-only diet, which she likens to humans eating cereal all the time. Schwabe feeds Finch’s recipe to two of her older dogs.

“It’s extremely easy for me,” Schwabe says. “I could probably do this myself, but I don’t.”

Finch, who emigrated from Germany almost 25 years ago, has her hands full. On top of running PeopleFood for Dogs, she’s a full-time nurse, a volunteer at the Wildlife Care Alliance and the owner of 19 pets: 12 dogs, six cats and a double yellow-headed Amazon parrot.

Some of the pets remain from when she fostered animals for the Bedford Humane Society. Finch stopped fostering five yeas ago so she could work full-time.

“Over the years, I’ve fostered 150 dogs and 150 cats. I’ve had two birds, an aquarium full of fish, and I was an inch away from having a mini-goat,” says Finch in a faint German accent.

The pets dominate Finch’s house, which is scattered with dog crates, litter boxes, toys and other pet paraphernalia.

The dogs’ domain is the front and backyard, and first floor of the house. The cats live on the second floor — “kitty land,” as Finch calls it.

“It isn’t that I wanted so many,” Finch says. “Nobody wanted these guys, and I just can’t have them killed. …

“So I take care of them. But that’s not an invitation to bring anymore either.”

Every animal has a story. There’s 12-year-old Grover, a black coonhound with tan eyebrows and paws.

“Who wants a gun-shy coonhound?” Finch says. “That’s why he’s here.”

There’s Sparky, a 14-year-old Chihuahua who loves attention and trips to visit people at a nursing home. Sparky is the smallest dog, but he has the loudest bark.

“I couldn’t give him away,” Finch says.

There’s Daisy, a scruffy terrier-Chihuahua mutt who refused to leave.

“When my friend came to pick up the dog, she’d hide under the bed.”

Annette Miller, owner of the Canine Bath Shop and secretary of the Bedford Humane Society, said that Finch was one of the most devoted volunteers.

“She would stop and pick up animals on the road,” Miller says.

“She’s just a very caring person. Animals are important to her and she works very hard for them.”

Finch says the hardest part is paying the vet bills, which she estimates run between $2,000 and $3,000 a year.

She hopes that one day she’ll be able to devote all her time to People Food For Dogs. In the past five years, she has seen sales increase, with a spike after the recent pet food recall in which thousands of pets died from contaminated food.

When Finch does get time to herself, she likes to read.

“I sneak a book here and there,” she says. “The cats are very well-educated. They like it when I read to them.”