Raw Pleasure

I recently realized a raw food producer was based fairly close to us! I've been trying different dog foods for Monster, among them two different brands of raw food. One he liked OK, but became horribly skinny. The other he liked better, but he's been shedding dandruff and been generally mopey. Neither brand he'd actually finish a full serving of before it went bad (the downside of raw food). So I started looking around for a new brand, and as I said I discovered there was one which is locally produced. It's less than an hour's drive away, and if you buy from the factory you get a sizable discount. Not only that, but if you buy the stuff before it's sliced up and packaged, you get it even cheaper. Raw food is more expensive than most top brand kibble, but the health benefits outweigh the pain in the wallet to me. But this way, even counting gas money, we're getting it cheaper than average priced kibble. I feel there must be a catch somewhere... Let's ask Monster.

Leave me alone, I found a giant meat popsicle!

Nope, Monster doesn't seem to be complaining. Admittedly it's a bit of work to break that thing apart, but two of those bad boys should last us close to a month (depending on how much he winds up eating/needing per day, we haven't landed on a portion size yet).

Ideally I'd like to source and mix Monster's food myself (because you seriously would not believe what gets put in dog food!), but I can't handle it. Apart from feeling I need a science degree to be comfortable balancing a healthy diet for him, I just hate having that raw meat goo all over my kitchen. I've been a vegetarian for... I'm not sure, five or six years now I think. Meat is not something I enjoy handling.

But of all the raw dog foods I've ever handled (and we've tried others that just never made it onto the "let's try this for a while"-list), this is the most pleasant to have defrosting and eaten in the house. It smells exactly like the slaughter house in hunting season when I was growing up [*], and if you don't know what that smells like I can only say it's a lot more pleasant than the smell of those plastic wrapped dead clumps you buy in the supermarket.

[*: That's right. I grew up in the countryside. My family raised animals for meat, first sheep and later cattle. Everyone hunts. I've helped with slaughter and butchering, and I know where meat comes from. The idea that all vegetarians are city weaklings who were never taught the realities of life is a ridiculous security blanket meat eaters snuggle up to, so they can avoid looking at their own choices. Yeah, I said it.

And I don't chose to be a vegetarian because I'm too weak to eat meat. I have no problem killing for survival, either in defense or for food. I'd kill you without a second's remorse if my life was on the line. But I won't kill for pleasure, which is what you're doing when you eat meat. You don't need it, you just want it. And on top of that, most of you could never handle killing an animal for food, you just expect someone else to do it for you so you don't have to think about the nasty bits. Yeah, I judge.]

Having said all that, it'd never occur to me to make the same choice for Monster, or any other pet. Ethics is a responsibility for those who can understand it.