Feeding & Nutrition

We were sitting on the canal towpath, the dog and I, because the park was closed for a fun run and I'd forgotten lunch, and a tin of mackerel in sunflower oil was all I had in the rucksack, the kind of thing you buy for yourself and never quite eat, the label slightly dog-eared from being shoved behind the beans.

The dog, a beagle called Tubs who has only ever known dry biscuit shaped like a bone, went rigid when the lid came off. His nose did that thing where it forgets how to be subtle, and a rivulet of drool appeared, which I'd never seen over his boring brown kibble, the stuff he eats with the enthusiasm of a clerk filing taxes.

I gave him a flake. He did not chew. He did not breathe. The mackerel was gone before I'd blinked, and then he looked at the tin the way a person looks at a winning lottery ticket, a look that said I have been lied to about food my entire life.

On the walk home I thought about it. He'd been on the same biscuit since a puppy, the same scoop, the same bowl, the same face he makes before he eats it, which is to say no face at all. One flake of real fish and the dog had opinions. He had desires. He had a soul, apparently, that biscuit had been quietly starving, or at least keeping very calm about.

So mackerel became a thing. Not every day, because a tin a day is a rich dog and a poor owner, but once or twice a week I'd open one, drain the oil, and mash a fillet through his dinner. The change in him was daft. He'd hear the ring-pull from the next room. He'd come at a trot for fish where he'd saunter for biscuits, and the saunter, I now realise, was the sound of a dog who'd given up hoping.

The oil I pour off, by the way. Sunflower oil adds nothing a dog needs and the calories stack up fast, so I give him the flesh, not the bath. And I rinse if it's the salty kind, though the plain ones are better, and I check the label like a hawk because some tins sneak in tomato or smoke or things a dog's gut didn't ask for and certainly didn't sign up for.

His coat, within a fortnight, looked different. Shiny, I suppose is the word, the way people's hair looks after they've been eating properly instead of grabbing whatever. The vet noticed at the check-up and asked what I'd changed, and I told her about the canal, and she laughed and said keep it up, the omega threes were doing their quiet work, and Tubs, unaware he was a case study, drooled on her shoe.

Tubs is twelve now, stout, content, a creature of habit, and I'd assumed his diet was settled and that was that. The mackerel reminded me that even an old dog with a fixed routine can be delighted, can still meet a new food like it's the first good thing to happen all week, and that the settledness I'd mistaken for satisfaction was maybe just absence of options.

I keep a couple of tins in the rucksack now on purpose, not by accident, because the look on his face when the ring-pull goes is worth the weight, and a dog who's excited about his food is a dog who's still in love with being alive, which is the only review I need and the only one he's qualified to give.

We still sit by the water most weeks, though the fun run's long over, and the tin comes out and we share it, him the fish, me the quiet, and the towpath feels like the right place to be, partly because the ducks have stopped expecting anything and partly because Tubs has finally, at twelve, learned that good things sometimes come from a rucksack and not just a bowl.

I won't pretend the beagle's a different dog. He's the same stout, happy lump he was before the canal, same habit of sleeping on my foot, same refusal to acknowledge the postman as a person. But there's a new thing in his day now, a thing he watches for, and I think that matters more than the coat or the weight, because a dog who has something to look forward to is a dog who's still curious, and curiosity, at twelve, is its own kind of medicine, cheaper than any joint tablet and twice as good for the spirit.

The tin's now a permanent fixture of the rucksack, next to the water bottle and the ball, and Tubs checks for it the way he used to check for the lead, which is to say with his whole body leaning toward the bag, willing it to contain the thing he hopes for, and most days now, thanks to a forgetful shopper and a canal, it does, and the beagle's opinion of the world is a little higher than it was.