Why I invented DOGGY cordon bleu

Forget tinned dog food. For pet lovers like DEBORA ROBERTSON only home-made parsley terrine and carrot ‘cake’ will do . . .

Overnight, it seemed I was to become the face of home-made dog food.

In a world where many humans haven’t got enough to eat, I am aware there is potentially something ludicrous about feeding my dog organic chicken livers. But when you take on the responsibility of any sentient creature, it’s your duty to give it the best life you can.

I sometimes imagine what my grandmother, Barbara, would have thought of this strange turn in my career. She was a merciless destroyer of pretension who, on viewing any kind of spoiled behaviour, would utter the killer lines ‘well, it’s a pity about you’, or ‘what you need is a good floor to scrub’. What would she think about me spending my evenings developing the perfect recipe for sticky doggy pudding?

I grew up in a village where in summer, children and dogs were turfed out of the house first thing in the morning and pretty much expected to fend for themselves. Children ate what they were given; dogs ate what was left over. Somehow, we survived.

In a way, I see my cooking for Barney as an extension of that old-fashioned way of feeding our dogs: not so much the scraps from the table, but adjusted versions of what we might eat ourselves. For example, I make sure none of his food contains salt, but many of the recipes — including the peanut butter banana bites recipe here — I would happily eat myself.

At its most basic, Barney might enjoy lightly cooked or puréed vegetables with a bit of cooked meat, or home-made biscuits moistened with chicken stock.

At its most extravagant, I admit his diet might sound like it’s drawn from a poncy gastropub menu — bone broth, pig’s trotter and parsley terrine, pork belly, oatcakes (made extra smelly by the addition of tinned sardines) and carrot ‘cake’.

But every day, Barney does more for me than I could ever do for him — he forces me from my desk into the fresh air, teaches me cheerfulness, shows me how to live in the moment and reminds me to expect the best from people. For that, a handful of apple cheddar chews seems very small payment indeed.