The sale of pet food is marketing genius, capitalism at its finest. Like many, I subscribe to a service that delivers a bag of kibble every month. For the sake of convenience I put up with the patronising conceit that it’s prepared individually for my dog and therefore carries his name.
But I also feed leftovers, meaning I often have surplus kibble and delay the delivery of the next bag. This makes the company’s people cross: they demand an explanation. Have I been feeding less than I should? Is my dog ill? (All designed to induce guilt). They don’t give me the option to be honest: I just click “other”.
Dogs thrived on fresh, human-grade scraps for millennia. Working collies, in my lifetime, lived on porridge, maize, boiled veg and leftovers. Salmon if it was the poaching season. A peasant diet, in other words, which is what we’re all supposed to be returning to, for both our health and the planet’s.
Kibble by comparison is the ultimate processed food, produced like cereals by extrusion, which means heating to extremely high temperatures to optimise shelf life. It usually contains far more protein than necessary (non-working dogs only need 15-18 per cent). Hence a nation bursting with overweight and under-exercised pets, unhappy, hyperactive and badly behaved.
We’ve been brainwashed by the industry to believe that commercial pet food is the only option. The latest fashion is vegan kibble. One firm, whose kibble boasts a crazy 30 per cent protein (enough for a sheepdog running steep hills 12 hours a day) claims that the world’s pets eat a fifth of the planet’s meat and that a medium-sized dog has double the environmental impact of a Toyota Land Cruiser.
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My priority is simply fart-free dog food. Whatever its form.
Money honey
Beware the law of unintended consequences. My niece in France posted me a jar of homemade honey. It cost her €19 and a ridiculous amount of form-filling. A week later I had a letter from Parcelforce HQ in Edinburgh. The honey was being held ransom for a further £23.76 in HMRC import VAT and clearance fee.
When it arrives, at £40 perhaps the most expensive pot of non-manuka honey in Europe, we will not be remotely bitter. Oh no. The word Brexit will not pass our lips. Instead, we will eat it with champagne, toasting the magnificent new global Britain.
PS: I tried to buy a few more euros to send to nieces and nephews for Christmas. No local post office would oblige. To order them online from the PO requires a (ridiculous) minimum order of €400. Thus unfriendly, unnecessary bureaucracy stretches its tentacles into all our lives.
Deadly dilemma
A peacock butterfly, left behind by the summer, has been fluttering around my home office for a week, knocking persistently on the windows. How has it survived so long without sustenance? I know if I put it outside it will die. But which is more humane: fast death by cold, or slow, warm starvation?
Charity out of bounds
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A recent de-cluttering has revealed three surplus bags of golf clubs, none of them too shabby. There is something imperative about their potential: they demand that I defy capitalist orthodoxy (see dog food) and recycle them to young people, beginners, anyone who can’t afford a set.
But it’s unexpectedly hard. The last two years have knocked the stuffing out of so many good initiatives. A national charity could suggest only one golf club anywhere near by; when I emailed, the professional said they were no longer participating. I am determined. Next stop, Freecycle.
