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“Give a Dog a Bone,” by Jeffrey Steingarten, was originally published in the December 1998 issue of Vogue.
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"A fat bitch," I announced, licking the juice of a wood-grilled lamb sausage from my fingers, "is never an easy whelper." I was reading from the breeding section of a book called The Golden Retriever: 47Exciting Full-Color Photos. Sky King listened intently but said nothing, and not simply because he had not yet learned to talk. I have found that young males of all species have a limited attention span when it comes to discussions of whelping and obesity.
But, as always, Sky King s gaze was eloquent—as it had been earlier that evening when I dumped a plastic cupful of upscale dry dog-food pellets into his bowl and turned away to take care of my own dinner, a half-dozen fat little sausages crackling over a smoldering fire of oak and mesquite on the grill just outside the kitchen door. "I know that you are a fair-minded human," he seemed to be saying, "and that you have only my best interests at heart. But are you absolutely sure that I should be eating this pile of dead and desiccated pellets while you experience the feral delights of sizzling flesh? Who s the carnivore here anyway?"
I glanced back at Sky as if to say, "Cats are carnivores, dogs are not." But I had gotten his message. Dogs did not evolve eating dry dog food, and they do not prefer it now. Sky likes a good tomato, a hunk of raw steak, a hunk of grilled steak, pitted cherries, peaches, pizza, overcooked lamb sausages, running shoes, and Fudgsicles. He is neutral on the subject of heavily salted corn chips and has little use for Good Plentys. Sky loves to eat in bed.
Once our respective dinners were through, Sky and I watched the sun setting over San Diego, where he lives and to which I was paying one of my frequent visits. We went back inside and together began to formulate a plan for answering the critical question: What on earth is a growing dog supposed to eat? We ordered a dozen books over the Internet, settled into a comfortable chair, and began reading the relevant sections of The Golden Retriever: 47 Exciting Full-Color Photos, the only research resource immediately at hand. Apart from the caution concerning obese females, its culinary advice was sketchy: Dry dog food is the easiest, served four times a day and moistened with hot water for the youngest puppies, less of- ten and with less water as the puppy matures, and dry as a bone for adults. (The reasons: nutritional balance, total convenience, and minuscule stools.) This was the advice we had followed thus far with Sky King, whom my wife had named after a popular serial hero of radio and black-and-white TV in the forties and fifties, a fictional and fearless rancher-pilot who performed daring rescue and law-enforcement missions in his small private propeller plane. "Out of the clear blue of the Western sky comes Skyyyy Kiiiing!" each episode began. Sky s name is not yet among the top ten for North American dogs, which are currently Sam, Max, Lady, Bear, Mag- gie, Buddy, Tasha, Chelsea, Holly, and Shasta. Tasha?
I had to admit that Sky had a point about dry dog food. I rarely eat food in pellet form, and if a nutritionally perfect human food pellet existed, as it does in science fiction, I doubt that many of us would eat it. I never eat canned food except for tuna, foie gras, and that superb boudin noir from the tiny town of Urt in southwest France, preserved in metal at its sanguinary peak. I rarely eat processed or factory-made food, and I never eat "chicken by-product meal," fish meal, or "chicken digest," three prominent ingredients in the highly recommended, superpremium, supercostly large-breed-puppy formula called Eukanuba, chosen for Sky by my wife and our veterinarian, who sells the stuff for more than twice the price of Purina Dog Chow in the supermarket. I rarely chew on rubber toys. Yet I do not feel that I am a radically different creature from a large-breed puppy. Why shouldn t Sky eat pretty much what I do?
According to the Pet Food Institute, the first commercial dog food was created in 1860 by an American named Spratt who traveled to England to sell Canine cuisine: lightning rods and stayed to manufacture dog biscuits. But canned and dry dog food did not become ubiquitous convenience until after World War II, when it took its place alongside other labor-saving inventions such as pop-up toasters. Before then, most people regularly cooked for their dogs. And had America been a nation of sick and crippled canines?
Dogs love monotony. Dogs love stability. Change disturbs their digestion. Dogs have a weak sense of taste and do not care about flavor. These are some of the excuses dog owners use to justify their sloth and assuage their guilt about serving the same tedious dry dog food month in and month out. But if, as one always reads, dogs have a sense of smell that is an inconceivable million times more finely tuned than ours, they can surely teach humans a thing or two about flavor.
Most arguments about what humans or dogs or pandas in the zoo should eat end up in a discussion of evolution: What did we eat in prehistory, when our genes were being hatched? What did we eat in the wild before civilization twisted and perverted our native instincts?
Sky and I certainly do have different family trees. I presumably descended from the apes. Sky s and every other dog s remotest ancestor was a weasel-like Eurasian mammal called a Miacis, which took 60 million years to evolve into jackals, wolves, and foxes. A mere 12,000 years ago, one of these, a small gray wolf from India, gave rise to every dog that has come thereafter, except for some African breeds that may have descended from the jackal.
But if I am an ape and Sky is a weasel, why do we both love pizza? And why do we both go wild over bones? Maybe evolution is irrelevant at dinnertime. Somehow, man and dog became fast friends almost immediately. There is a grave in Israel, 10,000 years old, containing a human skeleton with its arm around the skeleton of a puppy! And ever since then, dogs have eaten human food, at least part of the time.
It seemed incredible to me that at the age of eight months, already at 80 percent of his ultimate weight of 75 pounds, Sky had never been allowed to gnaw on a real animal bone. He had been restricted to rubber and nylon facsimiles of bones, purchased on the cockeyed contemporary theory that even the heaviest and most solid of bones can splinter and, if swallowed, cause internal damage—a prime example of the denaturalization and medicalization and alienation of pet care in America. And my wife naively wondered why Sky had fatally wounded two of her Manolo Blahnik treasures! Bones would be my first project.
The next morning Sky and I drove to the supermarket and dis-covered that California food stores are not puppy-friendly. Back home alone, Sky was inconsolable until I returned with ten pounds of marrow bones from the freezer case in the meat department, precut into two-inch sections—heavy and nearly indestructible calcium-rich rings sliced from a cow s thick legs and bursting with the most delectable fatty treat that nature has to offer: rich and sumptuous marrow. I may be an ape and Sky a weasel, but 12,000 years of earthly cohabitation with canines enabled me to prepare, with absolute perfection, on the very first try,
2 pounds frozen marrow bones, cut into 2-inch lengths
1 teaspoon salt
Preheat the oven to 400° F.
Rub a little salt into the ends of the marrow-bone segments. Lay them on their sides in a broad, flat, shallow bowl. Microwave at full power for ten minutes.
Transfer the bones to a baking dish or small roasting pan. Pour the juices and fat in the bowl over them. Roast in the preheated oven until nicely browned, about 20 minutes. Let cool to the body temperature of a rabbit.
The body temperature of a rabbit is 101° F., as is Sky s. Any warmer and Sky may burn his little mouth. Wait much longer for the bones to cool and Sky s joyous and impatient barking may lead to hearing loss in his chef-owner. Sky may have evolved from a weasel or a wolf, but the golden retriever is not an ancient breed. Sky is a gun-dog, a sporting dog, a hunting dog. As we had learned in our reading the night before, goldens were created in the middle of the last century by a man called Lord Tweedmouth on his estate in Scotland when he crossed a yellow wavy-coated retriever formerly owned by a cobbler in Brighton and a Tweed water spaniel. (I am amazed by this account. What besides price, then, distinguishes a "pure-bred" golden retriever from a mongrel?) Sky has never come across a rabbit in San Diego, except in the shape of a biscuit, but when he does, he will find the little creature s body temperature just about ideal for dining. Or so I am told by an expert at the lams Company (maker of Eukanuba), which runs what appears to be a fine scientific research program on dogs and their cuisine.
With Sky deeply lost in the pleasures of his very first animal bone, I planned another trip to the supermarket. But first I placed calls to New York City to speak with two of the leading French chefs in America for ideas about what to cook for Sky. Most French chefs become great experts at canine cuisine early in their careers because the only cooking they are permitted as sixteen-year-old apprentices is for customers dogs. Even today, dogs are welcomed at most of the finest restaurants of France. By contrast, the restaurants of Southern California are surprisingly inhospitable. Not long ago, Sky was unfeelingly ejected from the outdoor terrace of a taco place in Solana Beach. In New York City, dogs were banned from the insides of restaurants by a 1972 law, but as a recent survey by Molly O Neill in The New York Times has reported, restaurants in New York welcome dogs to their outdoor areas with open arms plus ceramic water bowls and tempting doggy menus. After the Solana Beach affair, Sky agreed to stay at home when in San Diego if we would devote a reasonable percentage of the money saved to buying him either a new set of toys or a live rabbit. We chose the former.
Jean-Georges Vongerichten (Jo Jo, Vong, Lipstick Cafe, Jean Georges, the Mercer Kitchen, and a soon-to-open Las Vegas steakhouse) grew up in Strasbourg in Alsace, and as a teenage apprentice at the great Auberge de l Ill, he lived above the restaurant with the other boys and worked at menial tasks from eight in the morning until midnight—except when he was allowed to cook for the customers dogs. Sunday was family day at the Auberge de l Ill, and as many French families cannot conceive of a festive dinner without their dogs, 20 animals would appear each Sunday. Some dogs returned nearly every week, and their preferences were well known. Some owners telephoned ahead. For the others, the young apprentices would cook rice and green beans with braised beef, veal, or rabbit, particularly the bony front legs that are rarely served to humans. Jean-Georges remembers that the pressure was intense because a dog s dinner had to be ready exactly when its owners main courses were served. Later, the waiters were responsible for walking the dogs.
Daniel Boulud (Café Boulud, Restaurant Daniel) grew up on his parents farm near Lyon, where their dogs were mixed-breed shepherds who ate together from a huge three-gallon communal bowl. The family would cook a rich, nutritious soup or stew for their midday meal, and what was left became the foundation for their animals repast. Bones were added and pasta, beans, potatoes, or rice, and milk from the cows in the barn, and cheese rinds and meaty table scraps. The meat was always cooked, Daniel remembers—raw meat would have inspired the dogs to chase after the family s chickens.
I told Daniel that I was about to leave for the supermarket and needed advice about what to prepare for Sky s very first home-cooked meal. His response was instantaneous—a thick soup of root vegetables with beef short ribs. I asked Sky what he thought and, hearing no objection, whipped up a giant batch of
8 short ribs of beef left whole, 6 to 7 lbs. in all
Salt
2 lbs. carrots, peeled and left whole
4 T. butter
1 lb. leeks, trimmed, washed, and roughly chopped
1 lb. onions, peeled and roughly chopped
2 quarts whole milk
1 lb. baking potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
2 lbs. celery root and turnips, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
1 lb. macaroni, in any large chewable shape
1 lb. day-old bread or cooked rice or cooked beans or any combination of these
Place the short ribs in a 6-quart saucepan, add enough cold water to cover by an inch or so, add a few pinches of salt, bring to a boil, and simmer, partially covered, for about three hours until the meat is tender but before it has separated from the bone. Add the carrots and continue cooking until they are firm-tender, about 20 minutes. Add water as needed to keep the ingredients covered.
Meanwhile, melt the butter in the bottom of a heavy 12-quart soup pot and cook the leeks and onions over medium heat until they are translucent. Add the milk, a few pinches of salt, and the potatoes, celery root, and turnips. Bring to a boil and simmer, partially covered, until the vegetables are fully tender, about 25 minutes. With a slotted spoon, remove about half the vegetables to a large bowl, mash them coarsely with a fork, and return them to the soup pot. Stir in the macaroni and continue cooking until tender, ten to fifteen minutes.
When the carrots and short ribs are done, add them to the soup pot along with their broth. Add the bread (or rice or beans), and simmer briefly. The soup will be very thick. Ladle about three cups of it into a doggy bowl (for one of two daily meals for a 70-pound adult retriever), being sure to include one whole short rib, both meat and bone. Let cool to the body temperature of a rabbit and serve. Divide the rest and refrigerate or freeze. Serves 8.
For Sky, it was as though a veil had been lifted, as though the scales had fallen from his eyes, as though he were tasting food for the first time in his adorable life. In the days that followed, I cooked thick soups of white beans with carrots and fennel and large pieces of boned stewing fowl. And a huge gratin of macaroni with tomatoes and ground turkey. And a massive rice pilaf with hearty chunks of beef stew. The only way to tell if I had gotten the dish right was to taste it, which led me to the conclusion that I should not feed Sky anything I would not enjoy eating myself. After a few days of this, and noticing that when I ate Sky s food my own diet was far better balanced than when I cooked for myself, I concluded that in an ideal world, man and dog would eat the very same food every day—though with less salt and fewer spices in the canine version, because dogs seem to prefer their food a bit blander than we like ours.
The twelve books arrived, most of them excruciatingly cute recipe collections for biscuits and other treats. The ASPCA s Complete Dog Care Manual assured us that Sky s needs for vitamins and minerals were pretty much the same as mine. Most vets and dog-food companies want you to believe that only commercial products can be "balanced and complete." Feed a dog too little fat or a bit of extra protein and you will have a mangy, sickly, complaining pet on your hands. The problem with these claims is that every environment and every breed of dog requires a different balance; and there is no way that the race of canines—prehistorical predators, foragers, and scavengers—could have evolved to require precisely one elaborate menu of nutrients, any more than the race of humans has.
Feeding a dog cannot be an indecipherable mystery. The authorities at the National Research Council, most writers, and the experts at Eukanuba (who, while opposed to home cooking for dogs, were willing to share their wisdom) call for about the same balance of nutrients—25 to 30 percent calories from protein, mostly animal protein, 25 to 40 percent fat calories, and the rest carbohydrates—though the NRC notes that some dogs thrive on fat levels as high as 76 percent. Dogs do not have a problem with cholesterol! The charts say that Sky needs about 2,000 calories a day overall, though this can differ with the weather, the breed, the heaviness of his coat, how much exercise he gets, and so forth. The only real test is his health, his waistline, and the shine of his coat.
There are some differences between Sky and me. Chocolate is simply deadly for dogs; a pound of milk chocolate can kill a 20-pound pet. But evidence that onions cause anemia applies only to cats. Some adult dogs appear to be lactose intolerant, but the expert who sounded most sensible to me asserted that dogs grow to have difficulty digesting milk only when they are deprived of it; feed them a little milk and their enzymes return. Only dry dog food, you may have heard, properly cleans a dog s teeth of unattractive plaque buildup. Researchers have compared soft dog food with dry, but nobody has bothered scientifically to compare eating dry dog food with gnawing on sturdy bones, which appear to work just as well. For the health of a dog s intestines, 3 percent of his diet should be in "moderately fermentable fiber," which can easily be gotten from fruit and vegetables. Not for the first time in recent history, it looks as though the traditional French diet exactly fills the bill.
Sky has lost all interest in premium dry-dog-food pellets and, despite the inconceivably tedious character of air travel for grown dogs, is contemplating a trip to New York City for a week or two of home cooking. The folks at Eukanuba claim that Sky s attraction to real food is explained by the time we spend together in the kitchen and the amusing rituals of cooking, which Sky enjoys watching as he stands next to me on his hind legs with his paws on the countertop. Dogs do love novel foods, they say, which means that in a month or two, when Sky has completely forgotten his dry dog pellets, he will approach them with the same excitement he now reserves for the cassoulet de Castelnaudary. Any bets?