Dinner

A vegetarian for many years, I had to stop hiding behind neat little nuggets of kibble and come face to face with feeding my dogs meat. For a healthy and balanced dog diet, the bulk of calories must come from meat and bones.

I feed Nicholai, Izzy, and Kelley their meat separate from veggies and other add-ons, mostly for convenience, and partly because I hold on to the belief that bodies digest different types of food differently. So, at our house, its sweet potatoes and veggies in the morning, and – m-m-m, m-m, good – raw meat with bones at night.

My sources for meat over time have been many, ranging from meat suppliers, to my local natural food grocery store; in both of these cases I have been able to purchase whole cases of free-range chicken necks and backs, or turkey necks at a reasonable price. These days, for convenience, I purchase meat that has been pre-ground with bone and frozen into two-pound packages, I just thaw the necessary meat each day for that day's meal.

The dogs eat a variety of meat and bones – chicken, turkey, quail, lamb, and venison, and their knock-out favorite, green tripe. Nicholai is a lover of rabbit, but Izzy turns up her nose at it, so I stopped buying it the last time I ran out since it seemed Nicholai wasn't going to be here much longer. I guess I may have to re-think that.

The shift to raw meat was at first a hard one. But a little research into the dog food industry cured me of any concerns I'd had – which were mostly aesthetic anyway. Of course there's meat in commercial kibble (often the lowest kind and quality from animals in the most hideous of conditions), so in purchasing meat for my dogs; I took on the responsibility and power of supporting humane and healthy animal husbandry practices. I care about my dogs enough to feed chickens to them, but I care about chickens enough to make sure they don't spend their lives in darkened barns, stacked in battery cages.

Suzanne Clothier, who wrote Bones Would Rain from the Sky – Deepening Our Relationships with Dogs, wrote about feeding a chicken she had raised to her old and ailing dog. She said, "I see chickens sprawled in summer sunshine, white-feathered wings akimbo like sunbathing angels pausing for a moment to rest on the greenest of green grass. I see the brightness of their eyes … I watch my dog eat, and I hope that the sunshine still lurks in that flesh."

I thank her for that beautiful image. I, too, hope that sunshine, and the beauty of a life well-lived, lurks in the flesh that my dogs happily gobble down each night.