A Dog Responds to the Food Prices

The dog Biscuitgoat has not only taken over the blog, she's taking letters from readers.

Dear BiscuitGoat,

My dog Max has become a fan of yours, so I was hoping you could use your influence to help me out. With the economy being what it is, we've had to scale back on our spending, and I've switched Max over to another, cheaper brand of dog food. Now Max is mad at me and has gone on a hunger strike. Can you please explain to him the realities of today's food prices?

Yours, Cheap Pack in Chesapeake

Dear Cheap,

Times are indeed tight. And alas, being the lowest members of the pack, it is always the poor fate of us dogs to be affected first when conditions change. It's always our stuff that gets skimped on first. We don't get new toys. We get groomed by amateurs. They cancel our subscription to Dog Fancy.

But dogs are understanding, and we could take all this, without complaint, if that's what it takes to keep the pack together. It's a little harder to take crappy, stale, tasteless, probably poisoned with industrial chemicals from China, dog food. Maybe all dog food looks the same to you, but I assure, it is not. There is some brands of dog food that I have starved rather than eaten, and then there are some brands that buy their ingredients from unregulated and possibly contaminated Chinese sources. Remember that pet food recall less than a year ago?

Fortunately, my pack feeds me Bil-Jac, a local pet food company that uses only fresh, quality real meat and chicken from local producers. It's really quite delicious - in fact all the dogs that visit try to eat my food. Because I have managed to look particularly sad and pathetic lately, they have not only fed me the dry Bil-Jac, but the frozen Bil-Jac, which is so fresh that you have keep it in the fridge. Which is really good.

In other words, some things are worth paying more for. Cheap food, including cheap dog food, are cheap for a reason, and sometimes comes at a serious cost later on.

Dogs are not especially picky eaters (I myself will eat many things my pack considers absolutely inedible) so if Max isn't eating, you can bet that dog food is probably all kinds of nasty. I say find other ways to cut back and pay for some acceptable dog food. Plus, I suspect Max is also mad because he's the only one being asked to sacrifice. Are you still getting fancy double tall fancy mochas in this age of uncertainty? (And don't tell me you deserve the treat because of all your stress. Puh-leeze. You don't know stress until you've been chased around the house by a Dyson vacuum cleaner attempting to suck up your soul.) Still going on big vacations (which you don't take us along to)? Then consider budgeting there instead.

Anyway, good dog food is not that much more expensive. What the current economic crunch should teach you is not to cut back indiscriminately, but that one should prioritize their money and focus on what's really important. For me, that would be tasty, healthy food.