Living With Vegetarians

Keomosabe gives the lowdown — the good and the bad — on living in a house of vegetarians…

The humans I live with are vegetarians.  This means there are no meaningful leftovers for the canines, although I have come to appreciate the occasional plate-licking of squash casserole and the rather peculiar blandness of steamed zucchini.

Not only are the humans I live with vegetarians, they are also health food freaks.  Which roughly means no fast food, not even French fries, convenience foods, Papa John’s, hot dogs or Doritos.  They even turned the microwave into a bread box for their weird gluten-free breads.

What I’d really like to have is what dogs who live with normal humans get: pieces of steak, maybe a few bites of a McDonald’s hamburger and some fries, a slice of pizza, a little of the Colonel’s chicken, a Lays potato chip or two…

Peter offered Thunderbear a quinoa-and-kale chip, and Thunderbear spit it out.  Buckaroo jumped right in, scarfed it up off the floor, and said afterwards it tasted like baked pond scum.

While my humans are vegetarians, they don’t try to make me or the other pack members vegetarians.  We are most grateful for this because, honestly, the thought of beans and rice every day with some thoughtful chopped broccoli or diced carrots isn’t this dog’s idea of a dream meal.

The Aussie Tribe is on a raw diet of various prey animals such as goat, rabbit, deer, bison, cow, chicken, turkey, quail, trout, sardines, and salmon.  The raw food is a blend of ground bone, muscle and organs, which is pretty much what our ancestor wolves ate and still eat…except they have to actually hunt their food. We just have to sit next to the refrigerator and wait for ours to be served.

We do get whole eggs from the flock of chickens who live on the farm with us.  Thunderbear and I are especially gifted at seeking out chicken nests in the barn and making off with freshly-laid eggs that we eat shells and all.

Our proteins are rotated, because it is better for our GI tract to have various meat sources. It also reduces picky eater syndrome, and increases the colonies of beneficial bacteria in our gut.

We also get small amounts of vegetables and fruits, usually in the form of Buckaroo’s Stew, which hydrates in seconds and is perfect for adding to our raw meat.

We do get dairy products: kefir and lassi, or sometimes cottage cheese mixed with our raw meat.  Kefir and lassi provide beneficial, live bacteria for our gut.

Our treats are specific: recreational bones, BioStar dog treats, dehydrated liver pieces, freeze-dried bits of tripe, and beef trachea.  My human does make a wickedly good frozen treat with coconut oil and peanut butter, but we don’t get it as often as we think we should.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate the quality of food we eat, or the fact that we are undoubtedly healthier because of it, but would it kill my human to offer us a little contraband once in a while?  She doesn’t even let us eat the dog biscuits the teller at the drive-through bank offers.

The Golden Arches
I have listened to too many advertisements on television, and sat in the car on too many road trips not to know what the Golden Arches are: hamburgers, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, and French fries.  Of course, as the car goes whizzing past them, I can only sigh and imagine what it must be like to taste the forbidden fried foods.  I glance longingly out the window, stifle a whine, and join Thunderbear in stoicism, just imagining what junk food taste likes, the deliciousness of the forbidden.

So I am sending out this plea.  Take pity on a poor dog relegated to healthy food.  Please tell my human that it won’t kill me or my pack members to have some junk food once in a while.  We aren’t going to suffer from a couple of Milk-Bones or Snausages, or Pup-Peroni treats.  You are a human.  You can talk to my vegetarian, food-police human.  You can make a dog’s dream come true.