Dog Diets and Domestication

I shifted and got into the fridge this morn. Gave Flecka some leftover beef. She needed it. And some milk. Just a bit. She is old and frail and getting weaker and needs more than the doggy chow we get.

One of my ancillary duties has always been, as a dog in modern society, to provide supplemental diet to dogs, and sometimes cats. Dogs and cats at one time were the top predators in most parts of this planet. One would not know that by how we are fed.

I have often heard dogs, and weredogs, bemoan the waste of roadkill. "If only I could get my teeth into some of that," I have heard so many times driving by a deer down by side of the road. It's already tenderized. Who gives a shit about a bit of road gravel?

Don't get me wrong. I love Kibbles and Bits. And Science Diet is, I admit, put together in a very nutritious way. But eating dry dog food day after day would be like a person eating only oatmeal boiled in beef broth day after day. Gets old.

Me, I get out now and then. But most dogs do not, unless they live with a person with a more crazy and non-mainstream attitude toward feeding his or her dog buds.

In spite of this, many dogs, and cats and even horses, have learned to become obese. These are other fruits of domestication. And I cannot believe the things that people eat, things with scent that I do not want even to be in the same room with.

There is a couple that lives two streets over who are avid runners. They are thin, too thin. But their dog and cat are obese, way obese. Both have guts that drag the floor. The people eat vicariously through their pets. What the hell's up with that?

This is all affecting people too, obesity and bad diet, or obsessively good diet. It ties in with lack of or no activity or diet.

We are predators, dogs, cats and humans. We were meant to stalk and hunt and move and shred and tear and eat. Our bodies are responding to domestication and civilization in ways not anticipated.