Lucky dogs can chow down on quality cuisine
Food fussy pooch led owner on culinary mission to create healthy grub a pet can lap up
With all the concern — and action — around what we put into our bodies in this health-food-centric era, it was only a matter of time before we looked down, so to speak, at our pets.
Why should man’s best friend eat anything less than we do?
It’s a question pet-cuisine entrepreneur Jonathan Cooper, 33, has spent a lot of time pondering.
“Do you know what’s in commercial dog food?” he says. “It’s like feeding your dog the equivalent of McDonald’s every day.”
Cooper, impassioned dog lover and owner of the fledgling company All Good Dog Food, is on a mission to make a fine-dining meal of kibble, so to speak, so our four-legged pals can finally enjoy some quality cuisine.
That means whole grains, such as oats and barley, local beef, lamb and chicken and produce, such as kale, collard greens, carrots and apples “that come from a farm in a basket,” Cooper says.
There’s even cutting edge stuff such as nutritional yeast.
Of course, there are zero preservatives or chemicals. And All Good’s “meatloaves” are seasoned — slightly — with spices, such as parsley and marjoram (but no salt, because dogs can’t really metabolize it, Cooper says).
The idea that dogs and people should eat differently rings weird with Cooper. Should dogs eat meat and veggies? Yes, he says. “But chocolate or TV dinners? No.” Obviously. So far, lucky dogs have been eating it up. Operating little more than a year — the store has been open six months — about 1,000 Toronto pooch owners have fed this to their pets, Cooper says (meal plans range from $2 to $6 daily and there is free home delivery).
Would-be-customers, some with pups, others without, peek in the window of All Good’s chic Vaughan Rd. storefront, which could easily double as a people café — minus the stylish dog collars and dehydrated
“Do you know what’s in commercial dog food? It’s like feeding your dog the equivalent of McDonald’s every day.” JONATHAN COOPER ALL GOOD DOG FOOD OWNER
chicken snacks (we’ll get back to those).
Clearly, there’s a market for upscale canine grub.
Cooper noticed that three years ago when he brought home his first puppy, an Ontario-bred, rare, white Ger- man shepherd he named Dash. Dash turned his nose up at the storebought feed and refused to eat.
Unsuccessful trials with another nine types of dry dog food had Cooper panicking. He leaned on a friend in the know, who told him to boil chicken and rice for finicky Dash. The dog ate it up.
So began Cooper’s daily dog-food dinner making — and his research. An animal nutritionist formulated a special, healthy diet for Dash, and Cooper immersed himself in the science of pet food.
What he found in commercial bags was preservatives, chemicals, the spent, stale, throwaways no person would eat. “So why should my dog?” he says.
When friends and passersby saw Dash, a happy puppy with gleaming white teeth and pretty good breath, they would ask, “what are you feeding him?”
And that was it — the business was born.
Like any culinary start-up, Cooper and a skeleton crew pump out their meat loaves in a commercial kitchen, coring apples one by one, chopping kale, threading freshly sliced beef liver into a meat grinder. The result looks a lot like a meat loaf the bipedal might actually enjoy.
And could enjoy, frankly. I can attest to the first hand. All Good’s meat loaf isn’t bad at all. In fact, it’s a lot like pate: creamy, yet mildly coarse; slightly gamy. The only real difference: it is a touch bland. As Cooper says “it could use some salt.” No matter. Dash couldn’t wait to get his chops on it. He even ate my portion.
After all, and as Cooper says: “it’s for people who want to do better for their dog.” I get that. Still, Dash was no match for my muscle when he tried, only half successfully, to rip away some dehydrated chicken pieces that All Good packages as a doggie snack ($8.95 per package). They’re nothing but sort of chewy bits of protein. And they’re pretty darn tasty.
So, how come they’re not for people?