Serena serves herself a real dog’s dinner!
WHEN tennis stars sit down to a pre-match meal, dog food is not generally considered conducive to a winning performance.
But it seems Serena Williams has learned this the hard way. She ordered a dish from a hotel pet menu for Chip, her Yorkshire terrier. And it looked too delicious to resist. So she tucked in.
Sadly for the world number one, the salmon and rice combo did not prove as appetising as it appeared – and within two hours, she was running to the bathroom of her Rome hotel to be sick.
Miss Williams recounted the bizarre incident in videos posted on the internet, admitting the food had ‘tasted a little bit like a house cleaner’.
Fortunately, dog food is not yet a banned performance-enhancing substance in tennis and despite the incident, the American star was victorious in her match and is still hoping to claim the trophy in the Italian Open.
In the videos, Miss Williams, 34, shows fans the gourmet dog food menu offered by her hotel, with dishes costing £12 to £14.
Wearing a hooded top, she says: ‘On the doggy menu it has soup, and all this other good stuff, look at that. So today I’m like, “I might want to taste this food.”
‘So I ordered him the salmon and rice, because I thought, “I eat salmon”.’ Miss Williams shows the rice and salmon, and it does indeed look much like a dish for humans.
She says: ‘Before you judge me, look at it. That’s the salmon and rice - it’s kind of mixed together, right? ‘I thought, “What the heck, I’m going to try a piece. It looks good.” So I ate a spoonful. Don’t judge me! I ate a spoonful!’
But it was then that her experiment took an unfortunate turn. Miss Williams complained of the initial taste, saying: ‘I mean, it did taste weird, I force-swallowed it. It tasted a little bit like a house cleaner kind of thing.
‘I don’t know what they put in this dog food, but Chip liked it and it looked good.’
She continued: ‘Let’s fast forward to two hours ... I just ran to the toilet like I thought I was gonna pass out!’
She seemed to be sweating in her video as she said: ‘I don’t think it’s consumable for humans. They should’ve wrote that! So now I feel really sick.’ It cannot have done her too much harm, as just hours later she beat American Christina McHale to reach the tournament quarter finals.
It is unclear whether the hotel produces its own ‘gourmet dog food’ from scratch, or buys it prepackaged – but those tempted to sample the growing range of such ‘high-end pet food’ are advised to exercise caution.
Animal food labelling rules mean manufacturers do not have to say what exactly is in their products. A dish can be labelled as any animal as long as 4 per cent of it features the relevant protein – even if it is derived from offal or bones.
Pet owners seem to have an insatiable appetite for pampering their pets. A 2015 report by retail consultants Mintel found a fifth of UK cat or dog owners would cut back on spending on their own food before cutting back spending on food for their pet.