More of us turn our noses up at mass-produced pet food and prepare our own, which must follow strict nutritional advice. Felicity tries out some recipes on Wilf
“We trust people to leave the hospital with a baby and keep it alive,” Debora Robertson, journalist and author of Dogs’ Dinners and Cooking for Cats, sighs down the phone. “We trust them to feed their children, but not their pets. Isn’t that mad?” Dog behaviourist Louise Glazebrook agrees: “The constant explanation that we could not possibly be relied upon to feed a dog without one of three multinational corporations putting it in a bag and flogging it to us at a ridiculous price really does make my blood boil.”
Put like that, it does seem strange. Yet, like many pet owners who cook for other humans without a second thought, I’m oddly nervous of admitting I sometimes also prepare food for my terrier. Robertson recalls when she first wrote about it: “I felt like I was coming out of a very strange closet … but it was clearly a big one, because so many people got in touch to say they did it too. It all went a bit nuts to be honest.”