Feeding & Nutrition

My brother came back from the shoot with a bird in a carrier bag and a grin that meant trouble. A pheasant, plucked, gutted, the kind of thing our grandfather would have cooked without a thought, and he dangled it at me and said go on, give the dog a bit, I bet he's never had real food in his life. The dog, a collie called Moss, had been raised on kibble and the occasional bit of chicken, and the word game had never crossed his bowl.

I hesitated, because you hesitate when a dead bird appears in your kitchen and someone suggests feeding it to the dog. But my brother grew up on this, the country version of cooking, where nothing edible gets wasted, and the pheasant was clean and the dog was healthy and I'd read enough to know plain cooked game, no bones, no seasoning, is fair game for a dog. The bones are the danger, the cooked splinter kind, and we'd stripped the carcass, so what sat on the board was meat, plain and simple.

Moss knew something was different before I did. The smell, I suppose, the wild iron of it, not the beige smell of his usual dinner. He parked himself two feet from the counter and didn't move, didn't bark, just watched with the focus collies save for sheep and food. I cooked a small piece through, no butter, no salt, broke it into his bowl with his kibble, and stood back. He ate it like he'd been waiting his whole life for a meal with a story.

The change in him was the part I didn't expect. Not just enthusiasm, which he has for most things, but a kind of seriousness, a slowing down, a chewing of the meat as if he recognised it from somewhere older than his breed. A working collie is built to run on this, on scraps and game and what the land provides, and for a moment the kibble-fed pet and the dog he came from lined up in the same bowl. My brother laughed and said told you, and for once I didn't argue.

I didn't make it a habit, and I'd warn anyone against treating a shoot bird as dinner without the same care. Wild game can carry things you don't want, the raw side needs freezing or proper cooking, and the bones, even the raw ones, are a vet trip waiting. What I gave Moss was cooked, boneless, a one-off treat from a clean source my brother trusted, not a new diet and not a weekly thing. The romance of it is real. The responsibility around it is realer.

He looked for more the next day, naturally, sat by the fridge where the bag had been, and I gave him his kibble and a bit of the usual topper and let the moment pass. A dog who's had pheasant once will ask for it forever, the way a dog who's had cheese remembers the sound of the wrapper, and the owner's job is to let the special stay special instead of letting it Become The Thing We Now Expect.

My brother still brings the odd bird, twice since, and Moss gets a spoon of cooked meat each time, never more, never bones, always from a source I'd eat from myself. The collie who'd never tasted game now perks at the word shoot, though he doesn't know the word, only the smell that came home with it. A country dog, briefly, the way his kind was meant to be.

I won't pretend it changed his life. He's the same dog, same kibble, same zoomies round the garden. But once, he tasted something his body remembered before his mind did, and the look on him was worth the carrier bag on the kitchen floor.

My brother asked if I'd do it again, feed the dog game, and I said maybe, once a year, on a clean bird, cooked, boneless, never a habit. The romance of the country feed is real but the romance doesn't clean up after itself, and a dog on kibble with a spoon of something wild now and then is healthier than a dog on a fantasy of the old ways. Moss doesn't need pheasant. He liked it. There's a difference, and the difference is the part owners forget when they fall for the story.

The carrier bag is long gone from the kitchen floor, but the smell of it comes back when my brother visits, and Moss's ears go up the way they did that first night, the collie who remembered his own kind of food for a moment and then went back to being a pet. I'm glad he tasted it. I'm gladder he's fed well the rest of the time. A dog gets one good story from a shoot bird. He gets a long life from the boring bowl, and the bowl is the one I trust.