12/18/2008: "New Experience: Eating Dog Food"

Hi All,

So, it's minus 22 here in Calgary so I'm having to park my bus at my folks' house to take advantage of their big driveway. Mine's too small, being a condo, and I'd parked my bus at a school and used their plug-in, but the temp dropped to -30 or so over the weekend and the electricity shut off at the school, so: my bus was frozen solid. A block of black greasy iced oil in the crankcase. Wouldn't even turn over.

So: the folks'. I'm here now a little early, feeling a tad peckish, so I head to the pantry. What do I see but a new product---Mom is always buying new products---called NUTRO (TM) Natural Choice Healthy Desserts. It's in a can, a little can like you can get flavored tuna in. 100 calories per container. Hey! Sounds intriguing, I must say. Apple crumble and Pumpkin Pie. Well, well, well! I'm a big fan of pumpkin pie! Dessert in a can! What will those food scientists think of next? The fact it was in the cupboard where the dog treats are kept was a little fishy, but there's also human food in there---bread, buns---so I wasn't so surprised. Pumpkin pie and apple crumble DOG FOOD? I mean, how absurd. They eat rawhide and pig's ears and their own fecal matter; why would any company go to such great lengths to make food for dogs that could so easily be misconstrued as human food, especially by a particularly dimwitted human?

So I tore the top off. Scanned the ingredients. The first was: 'Sufficient water for processing,' which seemed a little odd---I read a lot of ingredients lists and this was the first I'd seen that---but I was completely convinced this was for me, a human, and those lists are full of all sorts of odd things. In fact, the entire list gives no indication that this is not for humans. There is the fairly odd "Guaranteed Analysis" portion, which lists Crude Protein and Fiber amounts, which is nothing I've ever seen gracing packaging before. But as I said, I was full-on convinced and plus: Pumpkin Pie! An early Christmas treat!

So, yes, tore that top off. A congealed puck inside, not terribly appetizing but then, pumpkin pie filling isn't the most visually appealing substance on earth so I thought nothing of it. There was that familiar pumpkiny smell, though much more ... subdued, shall we say ... than a pie, but still, this was 100 calories, health food, and I've been on enough diets to know that sometimes you sacrifice taste when something is supposed to be 'good for you.' I dug a fork out of the cutlery drawer and forked out a good hearty mouthful. My folks' puppy, Briar, was drooling and barking her head off but then, she's a glutton, she does that anytime food's anywhere in the offing. I crammed that forkful directly into the unquestioning toothy void that is my mouth. Oooooh! Heavenly! No, not really. Sort of granular, really, like corn meal was mixed into it, and not really sweet at all. Couldn't they have at least put some Nutrasweet into it? Hoo-ey, this was health food like I remember it; why I stopped eating it. But then, I don't like to start something and not finish. I was pretty much finished when I scanned the label a little more closely. In the bottom righthand corner of the can, beneath the artist's rendering of cinammon sticks and three eggs and a whisk in a steel bowl (!!!!), which would lead anyone to think this was, in fact, PEOPLE FOOD, were the two words that, as I'd worked my way through the can, now seemed entirely logical: DOG TREAT.

Holy Shit! I've eaten a lot of ridiculous foodstuffs in my time and I plan to eat much more before I shuffle off this mortal coil, but 99% of it---the horsemeat shashimi (yes, I ate Secretariat) and gelded bull flank and blended squid guts and pigeon and all other manner of gustatory oddities I've shoveled down my craw---have been done with full knowledge of exactly what I've been eating. Here I felt positively bushwhacked! I swear to you, this can is duded up and labeled in a manner that almost seems to INVITE human consumption. As if dog food manufacturers are hoping people might eat it accidentally, as I did, and say to themselves: "Well, the dog food industry has come a long way!" I felt like the Gyro Captain in THE ROAD WARRIOR, fighting with Mad Max's feral dingo of a kerchiefed dog over the leavings of that ALPO can! Now, I won't lie to you: I've eaten far worse. And quite honestly, as I'd eaten 80% by the time of this realization and, as I said, I'm all for finished what I've started, I ate the entire can. I mean, it was only 100 calories. But I DID NOT go back for the apple crumble can, no sir!, and I will not. I'm shocked, really. It seems lately I've been crossing off a great many things on my 'had to happen at some point in my life' list---and yes, eating canine food seemed an eventuality---but I must say they are not some of the most impressive milestones.

Anyway, should you happen to be in a foreign kitchen, hungry, and spy cans looking like this:

www.thehungrypuppy.com/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=nutro-healthy-desserts

... do not consume their contents! Good grief! Do you see their labels? Apple-fucking-TORTE? Berry-frickin'-COBBLER? Our dogs eat goddamn shoes and dirt clods and their own turds! I cannot believe anyone, any pet owner, anywhere, thinks any dog would have a sophisticated enough palate to appreciate such things.

Clearly, I do. But then again, I'm a gourmand.

All best, Craig.