Fresh meat

YOUR reader recommends cooking for dogs (Letters, February 23), but I have never seen a dog wielding a pan. Why would anyone cook for an animal that, in the wild, will happily kill and eat fresh meat or pick up rotting flesh, eggs and bones? They chew eagerly on grass, herbs and any veg left lying around. When I was a child, dogs ate scraps, offal, butcher’s ‘trimmings’ and, of course, there were bones. Each morning, the dogs are fed as I make coffee, then we go out with a bowl of scraps from the previous day. I throw the food onto the lawn and the kites swoop. After a minute, the peacocks appear and the dogs join in. The wallabies wait patiently and hop over when the crowd thins. Judy Mcalpine, Oxfordshire