Wednesday, April 11, 2007
THANK DOG YOU'RE HERE
I was just musing over the pet food recall, and I stumbled on this post from a great blog called Fagistan, about how it's fucked up to feed dogs cheap, crappy food. Mr. Fagistan says that everyone knows wheat gluten is shitty for you, so why don't people get off their fat high-fructose-corn-syrupy asses and buy their pets some decent food?
This hit close to home with me, because I just recently decided I was too broke to pay for my dogs' organic food, which after all is much healthier and more organic and special than anything I eat on a regular basis. I thought "Science Diet food is good enough for them. It has the word 'Science' in it, it has to be healthy." Plus I have to drive pretty far to get my special expensive food, and I'm extremely hassle-avoidant. So I haul home a huge bag of the Science Diet, and my dog Potus eats it for two days and then stages a protest, standing by her bowl and looking up at me, as if to say, "This food is not organic, and you're a dirty whore who makes my stomach turn even more than these foul-smelling, wretched, chemically-polluted nuggets do."
To put it in perspective, Potus eats apples but spits out salmon, tuna, salami and sliced ham and she gives me that "You're a dirty whore" look when she doesn't get her daily 3-mile walk - and honestly, I've neglected to walk her maybe once in the past month. So it's hard to take her feelings into account in these matters, unless you want to feel tortured around the clock over how miserable you're making your dog by keeping her confined to a very pleasant house and small, sunny yard, which she shares with her confidante Bean, a friend carefully selected for her from the pound by yours truly. (And yes, naturally, I do want to feel tortured around the clock over how miserable she is.)
Her pal Bean does not turn up her nose at the Science Diet. Bean eats the Science Diet with gusto, and she wags her tail and looks up at me as if to say, "Thank you for this wonderful, nutritious meal!" She also eats the salmon, tuna, salami and sliced ham that Potus spits out, and she eats anything that falls onto the floor, and anything that smells interesting or has an intriguing texture, like leaves and twigs and that sought-after delicacy, cat shit.
It's funny, though. Bean is so thankful, but I feel about her the way God must feel about truly faithful Christians: I take her gratitude for granted. What I want is for that ingrate Potus to give me a little love. So when Potus stopped eating the Science Diet, it made me nervous, and I started to look into the pet foods recalled in the pet food recall for the first time (I had assumed, of course, that my expensive organic feed wasn't included) (and it wasn't) and there's Science Diet, on the list, and there's rice gluten in it (not wheat gluten, but even so, I hate that word, gluten!). So here I am, switching over to shitty, cheaper food just as it's being recalled. I am such a fucking asshole!
No, their exact brand wasn't recalled. But you get the picture about me being an asshole. So I bought another big bag of the expensive stuff. Potus still thinks I'm a dirty whore but at least she eats her breakfast now.
Anyway, I'm reading Fagistan and laughing, in large part because the title of his post is "I Feed My Dog Nothing But Cock," but just when I'm about to write to him and tell him that he's right and I'll never feed my dog shitty food again, I discover that he links to this blog! So then I do a search on his blog and my name (we've already established that I'm an asshole, why hold back now?) and I find a post where he says he wonders if I'm losing my edge!
So what do I do in response to this notion that I'm losing my edge? I write a very long, rambling post about the funny looks my doggies give me and what they mean.
It's official: I have no edge. I might as well just give in to it. From now on, this blog is going to be written in the voice of my dog, Potus.
11:42 AM
