Cooking

The beginning of each day finds the dogs running two by two from their indoor/outdoor kennels in the barn to their two-city-lot-sized runs out front of the house. There is a lot to do between the barn and the runs such as run up and down the 500 foot driveway, run up the hill to the chicken yard and henhouse, tear out back to catch all the monsters that have been lingering behind their kennels, chase the quail, snif the sheep, what have you.  It takes something quite special to entice them back from their adventuring and into their play yards out front. Chicken does the trick. Every morning each of our eight goldens gets a raw drumstick or thigh. Gestating and nursing mothers get three and even more. Whole chicken pieces just like you see in the photo. They have glow in the dark coats, great teeth and enjoy the best of health.

I cook my eight goldens their evening meal. Six months out of the year it is cold in eastern Oregon and we like to give them a hot meal at the end of their day. They enjoy it in the summer too and I always feel bad when we have to leave the babysitter with kibble to feed them. The home cooked stew is also the enticement to get them from the front runs back into the kennels at night without goofing off too much down the driveway and out back.  They love their dog stew.  I begin at 7 AM each morning by cooking for all eight of the adults in a large stainless crab cooker.  I put the stew on to cook at seven in the morning and turn it off at noon.  By seven the dinner has cooled off enough to serve.  I begin the stew with rice and top off their bowl of finished stew with a vitamin.

After reading dozens of confusing articles about how much of what to cook or not cook I came up with the simple formula, chicken in the morning, one third pot grain in the evening with one third pot of veggies put through the food processor before it is incorporated into the rice stew, and one third pot of protein of whatever kind is on the menu for that day.  3 eggs per dog about every third day.  4 oz. liver per dog about every third day.  4 to 8 ounces beef cooked up with the rice veggie stew on the days when it isn't cooked with eggs or liver.  I process the veggies because I want the carnivore digestive system to be able to utilize as much of the veggie as it can get access to.

We have a laying flock of 30 hens here that barely pay for their yuppie layer food by providing enough eggs to feed the dogs about every 3 days.  Chickens make neat sounds to fill your consciousness and they are very comical creatures.  I appreciate that they pay for themselves!

We are extremely fortunate to enjoy the friendship of a ranching family down the lane that supplies us with fresh cow and pork livers, hearts, huge beef knuckle bones, femers, well you name it, if the dogs aren't in clover I don't know a happy dog when I see one!  Oh, I'll admit it, our wooded runs are strewn with bleached bones that add a strange garden art sort of twist to this already twisted place, but I wouldn't dare remove a bone for fear of it being a favorite.  All get worked over regularly.  The dogs have great teeth!