Monday, June 14, 2010

Dog Food Mystery

Senior moment and general cluelessness:

I was down at the cottage in Beaufort NC with our two dogs. We had run out of dry kibble for our two 50 pound dogs, so I ran over to the local Food Lion and grabbed a small bag of food--not our usual brand, but a basic Purina kibble.

The rest of the vacation, these dogs couldn't get enough of the new food. Every time I turned around, they wanted more and their bowls were licked clean after every feeding. More than once, I remarked to my husband how much they liked the new food. You have to understand that in my orbit, a new dog food that is popular, seems to have healthy ingredients and is not too expensive is a valid topic of conversation and speculation.

We get back to Williamsburg and I am still feeding this great new find. I keep mentioning to my husband how much they like the food. Out of what I think is the blue, he says, "you know, it's probably not good to feed the dogs too much cat food. " Now I do put a spoonful of wet cat food in their bowls every now and then, but not a lot, so I simply ignored his comments.

We'll you can guess the rest, but it took me the rest of the bag to catch on. I was feeding my wonderful new food, when I noticed that Purina had kindly printed on the side, instructions on keeping your cat healthy. All I thought was, "Gee, isn't that an interesting cross promotion of their products."

Finally, a day or two later, when I was recylcing the bag, I finally noticed a drawing of a leaping cat on the front. My dogs had cat breath all week because they had been eating cat food. If you don't know, cat food has more of all the good stuff in it, so to a dog it's like having a dinner of chocolate cheesecake with ice cream along with Fritos and dip washed down with a glass of expensive Merlot.

Chris felt so bad that the party was over for the dogs that he boiled chicken to put on their regular kibble for the rest of the week. He never said a word.

Claire Stephens