Feeding Your Pet
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Feeding Your Pet
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Next Column
 Dr. Jim Randolph
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Not too long ago I had occasion to find fault with a brand of dog
food that tries to mislead consumers into thinking that their
particular food will solve hair coat problems.
Well, let me go on record that I find fault when fault is due, and I give credit when a commercial educates as it entreats. The commercial starts out with a pet owner talking baby talk to her dog (doesn't everybody?): "Are you tired of that same old dog food, baby? You've been eating it for two whole weeks, here's another brand." She places the new bowl of food down, the dog's intestinal tract's response to the new diet is immediate upset, and it reaches for a seltzer. Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, in the water bowl relief is! It's real cute, and it makes a good point: Buy one good brand of food and stick with it. Altogether too many pet owners mistakenly think that pets (dogs and cats) need variety in their diets. Take it from an expert, they don't. I like to use my 12 year old cat, Sally, as an example. She has only eaten three kinds of food in her whole life. As a kitten she ate a special growth formula for growing baby cats. At 18 months, fully grown, she switched to a formula for adult cats. She continued to eat that for six years. For the last 5 years she has eaten a special formula food for older cats. That's not what most people would call variety. Still, when 6:30 AM rolls around, there had better be some food in her bowl, or [some human's] ankles will bleed! She is just as ravenous about her "old cat" food now as she was 5 years ago. Some may complain that, "If I don't give Foo Foo the kind of food he wants, he'll starve to death." Which brings up an old timer's story. A hunter went to see a farmer who had a dog to sell. They discussed the pros and cons of the dog, and settled on a price. "Just one more question," said the hunter. "Will he eat cornbread?" "I don't know", puzzled the farmer. "I never offered him none." "Will he stay tied, then?", the hunter inquired further. "Yep, he's good about that". "Then he'll eat cornbread!" said the satisfied hunter. Picky eaters are made, not born. While Your Pet's Doctor doesn't recommend cornbread, or any other kind of people food for pets, the principle is, "No healthy dog or cat ever starved to death." And please, don't give seltzers to your pets, either.
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