Dog Food

A blogger friend of mine recently said that every dog-owning blogger eventually blogs about his/her dogs. Why should I be any different? I might as well get it out of the way.

I live with two labrador retrievers who seem to be as passionate about food as I! The male, in particular, loves almost nothing better than to stand by my side in the our very small kitchen, angling for scraps from the cutting board.

He and his sister are not especially picky, but they are happy to be healthy eaters when they must. When our boy was a still just a wee pup, we started feeding him stems of romaine lettuce in the morning as a sort of after-breakfast dessert. The stems were left over from the morning's ritual distribution to our cats of torn-up lettuce leaves. A daily bowl of lettuce seemed to be keeping them away from the African violets and the Christmas cactus. But what to do with the fibrous stems?

Ah, yes. Feed them to the bottomless dog! He'll dispose of them! And he did. Con mucho gusto!
And now his sister, too, looks forward to the morning sacrament.

They both are very good vegetable eaters. They love carrots, broccoli stems, raw potato, even turnips. They're also appreciative of fruits. They've never met an apple they didn't like. They beg for clementines, although they sometimes appear disappointed by navel oranges. Our little girl recently had her first bite of banana. She was skeptical at first, as is sometimes her way, but willing to try anything once. And, of course, she loved it and looked hungrily for more.

Berries are the best. This past summer I raised a crop of tristar strawberries in a strawberry planter on our deck. When our boy discovered them it was hard to keep him away. He'd go out to do his business, manage to get down the stairs; but then, thinking I wasn't keeping careful account of what had passed, he'd try to sneak right back up the stairs to get to the planter. I'd find him up there eating berries right off the stems. We had quite a good first crop this summer, but it did rather take a hit from the dog.

Then he discovered the blue- and rasp-berries. Our neighbor has both growing along the fence that runs between our yards. And in mid-summer, the branches began to navigate through the chain link from her yard into ours. In short order, I found that our boy was going down the stairs - and staying down - but making his way now immediately and persistently to the berry bushes, pulling both kinds off the branches, raspy stickers in his lips be damned!

A fall crop of raspberries has ripened now, and so he's at it once again. When I see him over there munching away, I have to laugh. What a fine speciman of his kind! Labrador retrievers, after all, came from stock that ranged in Newfoundland. They'd spend their summers working, helping the fishermen retrieve their fishful nets. In the winter, though, when food was scarce for human and canine, the fishermen would turn them loose to scavange what they could. They're survivors, these dogs. They really will eat almost anything.

I don't mean to give you the impression that my dogs have, in any sense, a narrow taste for crops alone. Like any healthy labradors they also have an abiding passion for cheese, meat, oatmeal cookies, yogurt, peanutbutter, and whatever else is offered. I do believe, however, that clementimes are the best of the best. You should see them beg!