Feeding & Nutrition

I meant to roast a chicken. That was the plan on a grey Sunday, the kind where the oven is the only warm thing in the house. I pulled a tray out of the bottom drawer, threw in what I thought was a chicken-shaped lump wrapped in foil, and went to shower. The smell that filled the flat an hour later was wrong. Sweet, not savoury.

It was a butternut squash. My partner had prepped it for a soup that never got made, wrapped it the same way, and tucked it next to the chickens. I'd grabbed the wrong foil parcel. The squash came out soft, caramel at the edges, and before I could decide what to do with it, the beagle, Ludo, had his nose in the gap of the open oven door.

Ludo is a beagle, which is to say his entire personality is a nose attached to a stomach. He'd never shown interest in vegetables. Carrots, he ignored. Peas, he'd spit. But roasted butternut, sweet and soft, was apparently a revelation. He ate the cooled flesh off the spoon I used to test it, and looked at me with the specific beagle expression that means 'there is more, where is it.'

I started roasting one every week after that. Halved, seeds scooped, a little time in the oven, then mashed into his evening kibble as a topper. It's filling, it's cheap, and it turned a dog who bolted his food into a dog who licked the bowl looking for more squash. The weight, which had crept up over winter, crept back down.

The surprise was the waiting. Ludo began stationing himself by the oven door around the time I usually cooked, not barking, just sitting, the way he used to sit by the treats cupboard. He'd learned the sound of the squash tray going in. A beagle, voluntarily calm near an oven, is not something I expected to witness.

I checked with the vet that squash was fine, and she laughed and said it's a fine low-calorie filler, just no added sugar or butter, and watch the seeds if he's a gulper. I scoop them now and roast them separately for myself, which feels suitably domestic.

What I like is the accident of it. The best thing in Ludo's week came from me grabbing the wrong parcel on a grey day. I still roast the chicken most Sundays, but the squash has its own slot now, and the beagle has his post by the oven, and the flat smells of something sweet and harmless, and everyone is a little happier for it.

I started roasting two at a time, one for us, one for Ludo, because the single squash never stretched. The seeds I scooped went onto a tray for myself, oiled and salted, and the dog watched that process with the focus of a hawk, certain the seeds were the best part and that I was withholding. He's not wrong that they're good. He's just not getting them, because the vet's warning about a gulper and the seeds stuck, and I'm not risking a blocked beagle for a snack.

My partner found the whole thing funny, the man who grabbed the wrong parcel now deliberately roasting squash for the dog every week. He'd thought the dog-food aisle was the end of the conversation. He's learned that with me the conversation never ends, it just moves to the oven. He eats the other half of the squash, so it's not a total loss to the human larder.

I tried a little on Maude the cat, mashed smooth, and she accepted it with the same wary approval she gives most new foods, which is to say she ate it and then looked at me as if to say 'is this all.' Cats. But it's a useful trick for a cat who's gone off her own food for a day, a spoon of sweet squash to tempt the appetite back, and the vet nodded when I mentioned it.

The beagle's post by the oven is now permanent. Visitors find him there, a small loaf-coloured dog with his chin on his paws, watching the dial, and I have to explain that no, he's not trained, he's just hopeful, and hope, in a beagle, is a full-time occupation. The squash was an accident. The routine it built is not.

I sometimes wonder what Mrs Hale, two plots down, would make of a beagle claiming the oven. She kept cats, not dogs, and would probably tell me I've spoiled him, which is true, and that he was better for it, which is also true. The squash was a mistake with a happy ending, the kind you only get to call a mistake because it worked out. Ludo would call it a plan.