When my grandparents were still with us, there was always a bucket under the kitchen sink. This was the dog bucket, where scraps and bones from our meals would end up, eventually being taken to the metal basin outside the house where the dogs dined.
The dog would have a doghouse, and never, ever, enter the house.
On our farm it was the same thing: by and large, the dog ate what we ate. When my parents split and Dad was on his own, he would always have a bag of crumbles as a supplement because, as a single person, he didn't have lot of leftovers to feed a large German Shepherd. But generally speaking, if it was good enough for us to eat, it was good enough for the dog to eat. Trust me, the dog would eat the scraps eagerly. The crumbles? Not so much.
These days try to tell that to a brainwashed dog owner and see if you get a rational response. You're more likely to get Neil Young to sign off on a pipeline project.
"Oh, my vet said my dog has to eat Brand X food!" they'll say.
"You can't give a dog scraps!"
"How dare you give my dog chicken scraps?"
One wonders if that same veterinary clinic also, by chance, sells dog food?
On CBC News today, a story talked about a dog owner whose dog had died of renal failure. Their vet suspected made-in-China dog food was to blame. Therefore they were demanding Costco pull the product from its shelves. I wonder, did that vet sell dog food, too? We have a hard enough time figuring out renal failure in humans, now we know conclusively Chinese dog food is to blame? Would that vet have recommended table scraps, instead? Fat chance.
Just how did dogs make it to the 20th and 21st century before the creation of industrially produced dog food? Did they have specifically blended formulas during the Middle Ages, when the average person was close to starving at any given time? How did they possibly survive until we built these factories to churn out dog food?
As for the "dogs can't eat chicken" argument, might I point out that with teeth that are conveniently called canines, those teeth are meant to kill and eat meat. God did not give them such teeth to eat crumbles. Most predators tend to eat animals that are smaller than them, i.e. dogs eat birds.
When we kept chickens on the farm, every so often we would get a fox that had found his meal ticket. Every day, one more chicken would go missing. Since a fox is about as close to a dog as you are going to get, I would say that fox was quite happy to eat its daily chicken until it ate a .22 bullet.
I may perhaps be jaded by the fact as a kid, our dogs were guard dogs. A dog's place was outside, period. Big, with big teeth, we never had gas stolen from our farmyard tanks. One dog we had had failed police training apparently because he was too aggressive. That dog's son would chase vehicles to the point where I saw him flatten the tires on three different vehicles, while they were driving out of the yard. Thus I never spent much time with a cute, cuddly dog on my lap watching the football game.
I've also seen too many cases of dogs causing such enmity between neighbours, you would think there was a war on. Why? Over a dog. A stupid dog.
How did dogs get to such a high place in our society that some people would spend piles of money on their mutt, but don't give a damn about people starving? If you watch some of the realty shows on HGTV like House Hunters, there is no end of dog owners willing to fork over hundreds of thousands of additional dollars to ensure the place is just right for Muffy.
It's not your child. It's not a human. It's a dog. If you have so much money to spend, give it to the Salvation Army. I'm sure they can put it to good use.
- Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected].
