>>>My geriatric dog is on a special diet that requires that I
>>>boil a couple of chickens weekly for her.
>>
>>Your dog is lucky to have such an owner.
>
>Well, she's a good old dog, and I'll miss her terribly when she
>goes (in addition to being nearly 14, she has advanced liver
>cancer). So I try to treat her as good as I can while she's
>here. I also boil yams and sweet potatoes for her, and some
>days she gets canned tuna or salmon. And you don't even want
>to know about her medical bills....


Sorry about your old friend. I had an old feline friend from my childhood and
I catered to her a lot when she was a twenty-year-old.

>Thanks for all the recommendations, everyone. I think I'll
>start reducing the stock with the bones -- I typically debone
>the chicken soon after it's done, so they're right there for me
>to crack and toss back into the pot.

Sounds like a good plan.

I have a vegetarian neighbor with three large dogs who cooks up lots of
chickens for them.

I sometimes wonder about feeding premium foods to pets with no health problems.
Amber just ate mostly store brand food and lived a long and happy life. She
really took to that Crave brand of kibble for some reason, and so did other
people's cats of my acquaintance. When my eight-year-olds were younger, I just
fed them Eukanaba, but it got harder to find here, so they're on store brands
now.

I do see some food snobbery with some petkeepers. One neighbor uses only
premium food for her cats. One of her cats looks like our James' sister so
much that we've mistaken her for him. But these cats don't have the nice coats
that our cats do; they look a little scrawny.

Shaw contact info at homepage --> http://www.panix.com/~mshaw
>================================================= ==========


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