Spring Grass

All three dogs have been munching enthusiastically on the tall, moist, wide-blade grass we find out near the Columbia and Sandy Rivers. After wondering vaguely if anything was amiss with their digestion, I may have put two and two together.

Grass has its own special place in the diet of canines. As I wrote previously, grass eating is ubiquitous across dog breeds, regardless of diet. It turns out that spring grass is especially rich in omega-3 fatty acids, plotted perfectly by nature to be chock-full of extra nutrients for the burst of animal life that soon takes place.

We humans have become obsessed of late with our omega-3 fatty acid intake. The reason is simple. Through our ingenious attempts to improve on nature, to grow chickens and cows and pigs quickly and cheaply to fill up supermarket shelves, we've stopped letting them eat the dietary mainstay they were created for – grass.

Grass is amazing; hardy and perennial, it can grow in a myriad of places and ways, taking sun and soil and creating green food that herbivores and ruminant animals make perfect use of. A grass grazed cow or a pastured chicken then eaten by omnivores – canines and humans – has just the right ratio of omega-3 fatty acids to omega-6 fatty acids to supply those bodies with nutritious food – a true free lunch, if you will.

When our animals are fed corn and soy, even if it's organic (and god knows what else when it's not), the miracle of the free lunch disappears. The fatty acids are out of balance and in less than a generation, we find ourselves deficient in the precious omega-3's. Omega-3 deficiency results in increased inflammation and pursuant problems, arthritis, degenerative diseases of all sorts, and the biggy – cancer.

Nicholai, Izzy, and Kelley have read zero books on nutrition. They don't worry about their blood pressure, blood sugar, or thyroid levels, or give a single thought to their omega-3 fatty acid intake. But they know, on these temperate, wet spring days, to gnaw extra bits of the fresh green shoots of grass.

Why do we continue to insist on "improving" on nature? I think nature got it right.