food, glorious food

Oh, arf, gulp, hrmph....excuse me! I was grabbing a quick snack while Mom uploaded the photos for me. Smack, gulp....

Ok, so there's lots of stuff I want to tell you guys about. But none of it is nearer or dearer to my heart than this first topic -- FOOD!!! What we dogs eat is extremely important. We need something that is easy to digest and change into energy to use for doing stuff, and to keep our insides as shiny and healthy as our outsides. And the best stuff for dogs to eat is the same stuff that our cousins the wolves eat. Because although MOST of us are quite different from wolves (although I have a few friends who act a little closer to that end of our evolutionary chain....), our digestive systems are pretty much exactly the same. That's because even though it only takes a few generations to change outside traits like coat color and the way we hold our ears, it takes eons (literally) for actual body organs to change. So if you opened me up and laid me next to a wolf, you'd have a pretty hard time telling who was who. (Ok, so that was a gruesome image....moving right along!)

ANYWAY! So the question is, what is it that wolves eat? Did you guess meat?? You're right!! Meat! And bones! Lots of it! As much as they can manage to hunt down and kill. Sometimes it's big animals like deer and caribou. Sometimes it's little stuff like birds and mice. But if it's meat, they eat it, along with the stuff that the animal they killed ate (and for the most part, that would be grasses and other vegetable like stuff, already partially digested in their stomachs). So lots and lots of meat, a little bit of vegetables, and then whatever fruits might be in season that they can get (berries or apples, etc), and whatever eggs they might come across.

I've heard these really weird stories about some dogs eating hard crunchy grain-based food, like our chickens do. It was pretty hard to believe, so I asked my sheep-moving sisters if they knew anything about this, and they just laughed at me and told me that it's all a big myth, nobody would ever give their dogs stuff like that to eat. I dunno. I have it on pretty good authority from some of my friends that there really ARE dogs that they know who actually eat that way. I'll let you know if I ever find any proof about that.

But I'm not here to talk about stuff I don't know about! What I'm here to tell you about is how Mom feeds me and my sheep-moving sisters, and how Granny Annie feeds my doggie relatives, and how most of my friends eat. Here's a picture of a really cool dog food made by a company called Bravo (I'm adding an link over on the left side in case you want to go get some good food for your dogs, too!). This kind of food has meat (chicken in this case) and bones and organs and vegetables all in an individually wrapped patty. It's a meal in a bag! This is not what mom feeds the sheep-moving sisters, but it's what I get for breakfast because it's easy to mix my vitamins and stuff in with. She says when I'm older and not eating so often during the day, I'll eat the same way the sisters do, which is pretty much just the rest of the stuff I'm going to talk about below. In any case, if you're only feeding one or two dogs, feeding them these Bravo patties is a great, convenient way to make sure they're getting everything they need in a balanced way.


The same ingredients in the patties also come in tubes like this one (although in this case, this tube only has vegetables in it, but it looks like this!). This is a 2 lb tube, but they come in 5 lb tubes too, in case you're feeding lots of dogs.

My mom keeps these tubes of vegetables (already pulverised and ready for doggies to be able to digest) around to add to her own meat and bones and organs and eggs to feed the sisters breakfast, and will be how I get my breakfast once I'm only eating two meals a day too.



Mom feeds us the mushy stuff for breakfast because we get our vitamins and minerals and digestive enzymes and other good stuff from Nature's Farmacy (which I'll also add a link to!). Mom says it's her "insurance policy" that we're getting everything we need, like when she gives the Things their vitamins at breakfast too. The vitamins are mixed with cheese, so they are very tasty and it mixes in with the mushy stuff really good.

Part of our mushy breakfast stuff is the eggs that our very own chickens lay. Eggs are super yummy and a really good source of protein (whatever that is, good stuff for dogs I guess!). Mom and Dad and the Things eat lots of eggs, too, although they cook their eggs. I guess they're as good for humans and Things as they are for us dogs!

The chickens are good for more than laying eggs -- they are good for eating too! Here's my usual lunch -- a couple of chicken wings, from our very own chickens. Mom says we don't always have our own chickens to eat, so sometimes we buy big boxes of frozen chicken from Bravo. The sisters say a big truck comes right in our driveway because Mom orders lots of chicken and tubes of vegetables (and sometimes bones and other things like the patties) at once and keeps it all in the big freezers.

Here's some pork, another favorite lunch or dinner of mine. Mom and Dad raise a pig or two every once in awhile, the sisters told me, so we've got plenty of healthy pork and pork bones. You'll notice all this meat is raw. That's why it's OK for us to eat the bones -- cooked bones might splinter and cause problems when moving through our digestive tracts, but uncooked bones are softer and don't break off in sharp pieces. It's important for us to eat bones because it exercise our jaws, keeps our teeth clean, exercises our digestive tracts, keeps our poops nice and firm and provides us with important minerals that we couldn't be healthy without.

Of course, we also raise lamb, which is why Mom needs the sheep-moving sisters. Here are some nice chunks of lamb defrosting for our supper tonight. Mmmmm.....supper.....I wonder if it's time to eat yet....?

Oh, look, a beef bone! Mom gets these from a guy who raises cows. Once in awhile he sends one to the butcher to be turned into hamburger, and we get the bones! (And we buy some of the hamburger, too, because it's very yummy for both dogs and humans and even Things.) We also have some hunter friends who give us deer bones, those are tasty too. (He gives venison steaks to Mom and Dad, too, but funny enough, the sisters say they don't share those with us....) Mom calls this kind of bone a 'recreational bone' because there isn't much meat on it, so it wouldn't exactly sustain us as a meal in itself. But it sure makes a lovely snack! And keeps a pup like me busy so Mom can teach a lesson, or hold a class, or drive across the state, or clean the house.

The sisters say that we also occasionally have duck, and I've heard Mom and Dad talking about raising Turkeys and Rabbits this year, too, so basically there's no lack of yummy, nutritious stuff for us canines to eat around here!

Ok, well, all this talk about food has made me pretty hungry, so I'm going to go see if I can hunt up something to eat here in my yard. There's still a couple hours 'til dinner, but sometimes Mom hides surprises out here, so you really never know what you might find! She says that she's exercising my nose, my mind, and my body that way.

Ooh! I'm hot on a trail! Smells like beef....

See ya!