Feeding & Nutrition

The fire had been lit since six and the chestnut pan was already on the hob, the old dented one with the warped handle my mother handed me years ago, and Pip, my golden, was parked two feet from the hearth as usual, watching it the way other dogs watch the treat jar.

I'd never given him a chestnut. They always felt like a people thing, something you ate standing up at a market stall with cold fingers, not a dog's dinner, but the pan popped and a piece rolled near his paw and he looked at me the way he looks at a dropped sausage, so I picked it up, let it cool on the windowsill, and mashed it on a spoon.

He took it like he'd been waiting for it his whole life, which is the expression he saves for the genuinely unexpected good things, the ones no training class ever taught him to want.

That was the start of a small winter habit. Every cold evening I'd roast a few extra, cool them properly on the sill, peel and mash, and stir the soft yellow flesh through his dinner. He'd hear the pan hit the hob and come trotting, which is more than he does for the kettle, and more than he does for the scoop, come to think of it.

The vet said it was fine, in case you're wondering. Plain chestnut, no salt, no butter, no honey, just the nut, and only a little, because they're starchy and a dog doesn't need starch. I weighed it on the kitchen scale the first few times, a tablespoon, maybe two, and watched his stools, because that's the only honest way to tell if a new food agrees with him, short of a phone call I'd rather not make.

What I liked was the slowing down of it. Feeding a dog is usually a scoop and a shake, but chestnuts ask you to stop, to roast, to cool, to peel, to mash, and by the time you're done the dog is sitting there grinning, and the whole thing feels less like a chore and more like a small kindness you both understand without needing to say it.

My partner thought I'd lost it. Standing at the stove in slippers mashing nuts for a dog at nine at night. But then she tried one herself, straight off the pan, and went quiet, and the next evening she roasted the batch and I just held the bowl, and that was somehow the nicest part, the two of us fussing over a dog neither of us would admit we'd fussed over.

There's a proper way to do it, apparently. Score the flat side with a knife so they don't explode, roast at a good heat, and never, ever give them hot, because a dog will gulp and burn his mouth and you'll feel terrible. Cool, cool, cool. I learned that the hard way with the first one and spent ten minutes blowing on it like a parent with a bowl of soup, while Pip watched with the patience of a saint who suspected I'd ruin it.

The shells are the fiddly bit. They stick to the flesh if you're slow, and a dog won't care, he'll eat the lot, shell and all, given half a chance, so I pick them clean and keep the bowl to myself until it's just nut, which takes longer than you'd think when there's a golden resting his chin on your ankle.

The smell of chestnuts fills the whole ground floor, that burnt-sugar-and-woodsmoke thing, and on the really cold nights the neighbours' dog, a lurcher called Sage, started appearing at the back door as if he'd been invited, which he hadn't, but Pip let him watch, and I let him have the very end of the mash, and now there are two of them by the stove and one of me, which feels like the correct ratio.

I won't pretend it changed his life. He's the same dog, same silly grin, same habit of staring at the hob like it owes him. But there's something in having a food that's ours, that we make together on a particular pan, that no packet ever managed to bottle, and the dog, who has given me a decade of mornings, seems happy to take it.

He's eleven this winter, slower on the stairs, greyer round the muzzle, and the little rituals matter more than they used to. A chestnut mashed on a spoon isn't medicine, isn't a supplement, isn't anything the pet shop would sell you. It's just a warm thing we do, and he leans into it the way old dogs lean into the few comforts they've decided are worth the trouble.

Some nights I forget and we just have the usual. Some nights the fire's not lit and the pan stays in the cupboard. But the cold ones, the real November ones, those are chestnut nights now, and he knows the difference, even if he can't say it, and I know it too, because the pan comes out and the hearth fills up and the dog, finally, stops staring and starts waiting.