Last week I was on Trent Loos’ “Rural Route” radio and one of the subjects we covered was about how we are turning our pets into our children, treating them like they are equal to human beings.

 

This week I saw a cooking segment not for people, but for dogs. Yes, a cooking segment on TV on how to cook a nutritious meal for your dogs. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

For one, they were putting veggies in this gourmet meal.

I don’t know about you, but when I scrape the plates off into the dog dish, the dogs are masters at eating everything in that dish but the peas, carrots and potatoes. I’m not sure why they think dogs should have veggies instead of good old-fashioned meat.

The second thing that came to mind was the vision of my grandma, Enid Carson, standing at her stove with a big pot of beef, cooking it up for her dogs. This is no joke.

Years ago, Grandma Carson would take me to her house for the weekend and one of the stops on the way home was Bains Meatpacking.

They would save the stew meat, the soup bones and the odds and ends that no one wanted and pack them up just for her.

She would take them home, put them in her big stew pot and cook that mess up for her dogs for the week. I always thought it was odd that she would cook like a chef for her dogs, while she enjoyed a steady diet of candy, Pop-Tarts and doughnuts.

It seems this dog-feeding pioneer was ahead of her time. What she was doing 40 years ago is now the featured food segment on the morning news. She was the trendsetter who I used to think was the crazy old dog woman. I guess she showed me.

I’m sure there are pet food prep shows in the works to show all of us that if we don’t feed our dog ground beef with a baked potato topped with sour cream and dripping with butter, we would not qualify as a proper pet parent.

And the day may come when pet adoption agencies will demand to see your pet menu and approve your cooking skills before you can adopt a pet that no one else wanted. Heaven forbid we give the dog that escaped death row plain old coop dog food!

You know where I’m going with this, right? With so many food-insecure children in our nation, why are we spending so much money on our pets’ diets?

Wouldn’t everyone be better off to take that disposable income and use it at the local human homeless shelter?

And wouldn’t our pets enjoy a trip to the homeless shelter to be adored by people who have nothing?

 

 Practicality has escaped us; it’s time to get back to basic common sense.

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers with questions or comments for Melissa Hart may write to her in care of this publication.