Dawgs & Dollars

Somewhere I read that a long time ago it wasn’t too crazy for a hunter to buy an old mule or horse, take the animal to a remote spot near home, kill it, cut open the hide and then brings his dogs for a feed. A big meal like that could last a good while but sick dogs were common from the decaying meat and the flies. Years later, at a time when dogs still ran free of leashes, when flea collars were unheard of and a can of Alpo was about 50¢, feeding and caring for a pet was still unlike today. Back in the 1950s my dog Jack got by on one can of food a day, didn’t require treats other than a ginger snap now and then, almost never went to the vet and never cost the family more than $4.00 a week. Probably many dog owners spent less than that and had healthy dogs, getting by mostly with scraps from the dinner table. Keeping a dog now is a whole ’nother thing. 

Three years ago when I brought Farina home from the rescue place her diet there was nothing special, getting whatever was donated, what all the other dogs got. Fair to say it was the cheapest dog food available. I changed that in a big way. Thinking a puppy needed healthy food for strong growth, I started out feeding her some yogurt, cottage cheese or oatmeal in the morning, a dish of wet dog food at lunch and a pan of lightly cooked boneless chicken thighs or drumsticks at night. She also got a fat vitamin pill every day. I bought some kibble and put it down for her to graze on but she didn’t much like it. With all that in her bowl daily she went from seventeen pounds to thirty pounds in a month. Sometimes I added carrots or green beans to the chicken or maybe chopped apple or blueberries to the oatmeal. She gobbled that up, loved honey and loved peanut butter. Figured that was all good. She got older and I cut back the amount little by little. All this time the vet was telling me to give her nothing but kibble and friends saying she ought never have people food. The way I saw it, the “people” food such as chicken, apple, carrots and green beans were all 100% healthy for dog or man. 

It took over a year for me, with the vet’s guidance, to understand maybe I oughta try getting away from things like chicken, that maybe that was the reason for Farina’s shabby coat of hair. Her beautiful honey coat started to look like it was thinning, with gray hairless spots along her sides. I tried two different antibiotics and that worked for a while but the hair loss started again. I thought it must be an allergy, maybe  something outside like a plant or a kind of grass. The vet suggested cutting all chicken, chicken meal and chicken by-products from her diet. I did that and the result was almost instant. Within a couple of weeks Farina’s hair was growing back to its natural golden fullness, the gray spots covered by new hair. That was the beginning of a radical change in diet. I started reading labels and eighty-sixing anything that contained chicken by-products, especially chicken meal.

The dawg’s coat was soon back to its natural golden sheen, helped along by no chicken or grain and a supplement of Norwegian kelp (seaweed) added to her new diet of Merrick canned food. She also began eating Merrick buffalo and sweet potato kibble, plus a can of Blue Buffalo beef or lamb two or three times a week.

Only problem now is the cost. The Merrick and Blue Buffalo canned food and kibble cost over $100 a month. That’s hard, even considering it’s delivered free in two days and keeps the dog healthy. But then, what are you gonna do? I figure whatever’s good for the dawg’s good for me too.