What goes to make a dog’s dinner? The phrase implies a mess, but most dogs’ dinners these days look fairly appetizing – a bowl of pleasant-smelling biscuits or half a tin of something that seems like cold meat pie filling.
It all looks very lovely to us humans. And that is the whole purpose – dog food is sold to humans on its appearance and aroma.
We don’t really know what the dog thinks of it. We only know that they wolf it down, but then so would you if you were hungry and you knew that the chance was that that was all you would get offered.
The fact is that a dog will consume almost anything if there is sufficient sugar or and salt on it. I had a collie-cross that would eat anything I gave her except Brussels sprouts (she would take them politely and throw them around, but she would not eat them).
It stands to reason that you cannot get a can of good pie filling for a dollar, so whatever is in there will not be best beef. Yet it has to be fit for human consumption, so what is it? Well, to begin with, the gravy is almost certainly manufactured of carcass scrapings and blood, thickened with flour.
That would make it quite nourishing, but not as appetizing as it looks. The ‘lumps of meat’ are probably not meat. They are most probably offal and soy or something comparable. Again, not a bad thing, but not what it is intended to look like to us and the dog will absolutely know that it is not meat.
So what ought to constitute a dog’s dinner? In the wild, a pack of wolves would bring down, say, a deer and rip its stomach open. The contents thereof are the first course. Since wolves by and large eat vegetarian animals, the stomach contents will usually be grass, leaves and other plants.
Then they will move on to the internal organs like heart and liver. The stomach and organs are the best bits and only the top dogs get them. When they are gone, they rip the carcass apart and devour the meat. Later they chew on the bones.
Those are the guiding principles for making a dog’s dinner. if you cook your own evening meal, cook a bit extra for the dog. Liquidize the vegetables to imitate the chewed food that would be in the deer’s stomach. Most decent butchers will have ‘pets’ mince’ or a mixture that they use for producing faggpts (meatballs).
This pet mince usually contains off-cuts, offal and bits of internal organs, some skin, stomach lining and arteries – all the bits they could not sell to their modern customers. That takes care of the dog’s natural second and third courses.
The butcher will also set some bones aside for his best customers, which you will become if you purchase your own and your dog’s food there. Feed the meat raw mixed with the liquidized vegetables. Add an egg and some dry porridge oats to bind it all and provide fibre and you have the ideal dog’s dinner.
This type of meal will vary on its own because you do not cook the same vegetables every day. You could add an apple or other fruit and celery is good as well.
Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on quite a few topics, but is at present concerned with researching Emergency for Dogs. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at What To Do If Your Dog Eats Chocolate.