Why every good boy deserves quinoa
After admitting she secretly cooked for her canines, Debora Robertson tells us why she’s writing recipes fit for pooches and people
As I write this, my 12-week-old Dandie Dinmont puppy, Gracie (London) Fields, is pursuing a blueberry across the kitchen floor as though her tiny life depends on it. Not for her, her historical purpose of chasing foxes and badgers. She’s fine with the organic fruit and tweed blankets, thank you.
Unbeknown to her, she’s part of a brand new, got-to-be-gourmutt trend. Watch out, because if it hasn’t happened already, canine cleanliving is coming to a kennel near you. Lucky hounds are feasting on organic turkey, kale and quinoa. They lap up rich stock, sorry, bone broth, as an amuse bouche and tuck into frozen coconut oil and raspberry “pupsicles” to cool them down on hot days.
But what am I saying, kennel? Dogs, even mightily beloved ones, used to live outside in kennels, but that is almost unheard of now. Today, our dogs are not only in the house, the chances are they are cosying up on our sofas or, gasp, on our beds, too. In 2010, John Lewis’s Christmas advert depicted a family’s dog being left outside in the snow on Christmas Eve, albeit in a kennel draped in festive fairy lights. People got upset and John Lewis pulled the ad. Today, we live in a world of no dog left behind. They go everywhere with us. My local gastropub has an advertisement in the window for bar staff: “Good with dogs” is now in the job description.
When I began to cook for my own dogs, it was my guilty secret. I felt ridiculous, but I cook for everyone I care for – so why not them, too? When I mentioned my from-scratch dogs’ dinners to my regular dog walking posse, it felt like soothing group therapy. Everybody was doing it – just nobody talked about it.
Someone has to go first. I tentatively wrote a piece about cooking for Barney, my 10-year-old Border terrier. I felt relieved, unburdened. And then something odd happened. I did several radio interviews about it and then This Morning called to check Barney’s availability. A posh cookery school invited me to teach a class (one woman came who didn’t even have a dog). A publisher asked me to write a book about cooking for your dog.
As I worked on the recipes for my book, I began to see my own forays into canine haute cuisine as simply an extension of how we all used to feed our dogs anyway, with scraps from the table boosted with raw bones and the odd bit of tripe from the butcher. Those dogs of yore all seemed to live for ages, without many of the intolerances and other food-related problems we see in some dogs now.
But many vets are wary of this new-old go-it-alone approach to dog nutrition. Of course, there are concerns if people are feeding their pets wildly unsuitable things, or imposing wacky, self-indulgent vegetarian or even vegan diets on their pets. But many vets now have strong financial ties to large-scale pet food manufacturers, so unless you have a vet who has a genuine interest in canine nutrition, you’re not necessarily getting the most unbiased advice anyway.
In the spirit of gastronomic adventure, I did try to introduce Barney to the joys of the attractively-named BARF (bones and raw food) diet, but it wasn’t for him. His interest in meaty bones extends to burying them in the garden and then waiting for weeks until they achieve the perfect level of revolting before reappearing with them, gleefully, in the house.
And then there was the bone about which we do not speak. A rather grand woman once came to measure a sofa which was in need of reupholstering. As she removed the cushions, she gingerly produced between her manicured fingers an ancient lamb leg bone, “I think this belongs to him,” she said, witheringly. She seemed the type who would disapprove of pets on the furniture at all, let alone burying their dinner down the back of it.
Now Barney enjoys a diet of around 60 to 70 per cent lean meat, boosted with vegetables, fruit, some grains, eggs, a little live yogurt and powdered egg shells for extra calcium and he seems disgustingly healthy. As I began to work out how best to feed him, I got some hugely reassuring advice from Louise Glazebrook, a dog behaviourist and trainer. She reminded me that we send people home from hospitals every day and expect them successfully to feed babies, so it’s probably not beyond our capabilities to work out how to feed our pets too.
When I don’t have time to make my own dogs’ dinners, I rely on bought stuff which is as near as possible to what I’d create myself. It seems I’m not alone. Gourmet pet food is flourishing, led by Lily’s Kitchen, set up in 2008 by Henrietta Morrison when regular commercial dog food was making her border terrier sick. Last year, the company reported £30million in retail sales. Where Lily’s Kitchen lead – with Wild Campfire Stew and Fishy Fish Pie – others such as Nature’s Menu have followed, with a mail order raw range that includes ingredients such as venison and wild boar, and Butternut Box, which delivers “hand-made” dinners tailored to your dog’s specific needs.
So it’s definitely a great time to be a dog. One final confession: in our house at least, the tables have been turned. Many of the casserole recipes I develop for my dogs, I then tweak with extra seasonings to make them suitable for me and my husband too. So in truth, we now survive and thrive on the scraps from their table, and I’m here to report my coat’s never been more glossy.
‘When I don’t have time to make my dogs’ dinner, I buy gourmet’