Yikes – I don’t post for a couple days and suddenly I’ve lost my flow; where on earth did I find the time? Damn shame too, because my stats were going great last week. Maybe the blog stats were pressuring me…
Giselle is what happened to my time. I am spending all my time taking care of this little dog! And in my free time I post about her.
The great thing about little dogs is that everything about them is little, and I’m not just talking about their poops either. (She makes about three of those a day.) It takes her a week to go through one can of dog food and I’m guessing it will be six months before she finishes the 4.5 pound (2 kg) bag of puppy chow. With that kind of consumption, what do I care how much a can of dog food costs? I say, Bring on the fancy stuff!
Especially with Bella coming home with gruesome stories about how they boil up dead dogs for dog food. Bleh. I thought it was an (sub)urban legend until I mentioned that to a friend, and she opened up her eyes wide and said, Yeah! I know, isn’t it awful? I didn’t fact check it or anything, but it was enough confirmation to send me scurrying over to the human-grade puppy food.
Human-grade dog food means that it was processed in a plant with standards as high as for food processed for human consumption. And while I don’t want to know the specifics of how many insect or rat parts are allowed in human food, human-grade sounds a sight better than dog-grade, especially if her dishes are going in my sink.
So, I bought, not the fanciest of fancy stuff, but the stuff that is supposedly just as fancy, but costs slightly less. Not only that, but it is also what the girl working there feeds her own dogs and there is a frequent buyer plan. (Buy ten and get the eleventh bag or case free.) It is Nutro’s top-of-the-line and it’s called “Ultra.” Bought one can ($1.75) and one bag of puppy chow ($8.99). But darn it if I could barely get Giselle to eat the canned “Ultra.” So then I went back to the Cowboy Corral in Yucca Valley and basically bought one of everything – by Wellness (the top brand) and by Nutro. Both brands are human-grade and holistic. Turns out that this feed store does not carry Science Diet; the girl there told me that it has lots of corn filler and that vets get a kickback for selling the stuff in their offices.
Of course, Giselle likes the mini pouches best. How could she not, with names like “Yankee Pot Roast” and “Chicken and Cheese Casserole” (pictured above)?! This is not perhaps the healthiest Nutro line, but definitely the tastiest and most expensive ($.99/ 4.5 ounce pouch). But is it going to spoil her and make her unable to abide regular dog food? Is it like eating caviar everyday? I’m thinking I’ll save it for her morning meals (mixed with tiny bit of dry food), because I don’t have time for her to be fussy about her food in the wee hours. And she seems to like the Wellness can ($1.69/12 ounce can) too, so I’m feeding her that in the evening. Even though Wellness is supposedly the top of the heap, the feedstore girl cautioned me that it is a one-meat food, versus the three-meat “Ultra.”
I’m holding out to see if Giselle likes the Nutro “Max” ($1.25) or Nutro “Natural Choice” ($1.45). I know I said to hang the expense, but do I want to be that person who feeds gourmet POUCHES to her dog everyday? That just seems silly.
And I got her a “Bully Stick” too. Know what it is? A dried bull’s penis… Can you believe it? You know the concept – use every part of the buffalo… So this is my life with a dog.