Feeding & Nutrition

One July the heat would not break and the dogs went limp. Pip flopped on the kitchen tiles and refused to move except to drink, and even then he was fussy, turning up his nose at the bowl that had sat in the sun by the door. I needed a way to get water and a bit of goodness into them without a fight, and the usual tricks were not cutting it.

I remembered my grandmother's stock pot, the one that bubbled all Sunday and filled the house with a smell that meant someone cared. So I made stock. A couple of plain beef bones from the butcher, saved from the roast the week before, no salt, no onion, no garlic, just bones and water and a long, slow simmer. Three hours later the kitchen smelled like a proper kitchen should, and the liquid had turned to a deep gold that set loose when it cooled.

The no-onion rule is the one I am strict about. Onion and garlic are rotten for dogs, they knock the red blood cells about, and a stock is exactly the kind of thing people season without thinking because that is what stock is for. Mine got nothing but bone. I skimmed the fat once it set, because too much grease sits heavy and the point was light refreshment, not a rich meal that would sit in the gut through the afternoon.

Instead of freezing cubes this time, I poured a little of the cooled stock over their evening kibble, just enough to wet it and release the smell. On hot days the dogs ate with more interest, and the extra fluid did its quiet work. Pip, who had been turning up his nose, cleaned the bowl and looked around for more. The cat, who had been sulking through the heat, appeared at the counter the moment she heard the ladle.

Hydration was the real win. Dogs do not always drink enough when it is hot, and a little stock tricks them into taking on fluid they would refuse as plain water. I noticed Pip perk up within the hour on the days we did it, less panting, more wandering, the old curiosity returning. The cat stopped hiding under the bed and took up her post by the window again.

I make a batch every couple of weeks now through the warm months and keep it in the fridge, a jar of plain gold that costs almost nothing because the bones were going cheap. A three-hour simmer on a cool morning buys us a fortnight of easy afternoons. It feels like the kind of thing people used to do without a second thought, before every treat came in a packet with a cartoon dog on the front. My two do not care about the tradition. They just want the bowl.

The butcher now saves me bones without asking, a small pile wrapped in paper at the end of the counter, because I mentioned what I was doing and he approved. He keeps the meaty ones, the ones with a little left on them, and those make the richer stock. It is a small kindness between strangers who both care, in their way, about what animals are fed.

I pour it over the food mostly, but on the very worst days I also freeze a few cubes, because the cube in the water bowl is the thing that pulls a reluctant drinker back. Pip will ignore a warm bowl left in the sun, then lap a cooled one with a cube melting in it, the smell drawing him down the step. The cube is the bait, the water is the point, and the dog is none the wiser about the trick.

There is a satisfaction in the slowness of it. Three hours of simmering while the house does its quiet afternoon thing, the smell building, the stock reducing to something worth keeping. It feels like the opposite of the rushed life, a pot that demands nothing of me but a stir and a wait. The dogs benefit, but I think I needed the ritual as much as they needed the broth.

Now the jar sits in the fridge like a small promise against the next hot spell. When the temperature climbs I do not panic, I just reach for it, pour, and watch them eat with interest instead of indifference. A few bones, some water, a Sunday morning, and the summer becomes something we get through together rather than endure apart.

I have started a second jar for the neighbour's old lab, who also struggles in the heat and whose owner works long days. A jar of plain stock costs me nothing extra and buys a dog I barely know a cooler afternoon. It is a small thing, the kind of small thing that passes between people who keep animals, and it makes the simmering feel less like a chore and more like a habit worth keeping through every summer that comes.