Howl (31 page)

Pet Quality

[Andi Zeisler]

I
HAVE THE KIND
of dog that people—if I may put it delicately—go batshit over. I’m not bragging. I’m just saying, the dude’s got charisma. People on the street—people whom I know
only
from the street—have actually screamed his name from thirty paces, and just stood there smiling while we ambled over, me embarrassed, Oscar thrilled at the prospect of strange hands squeezing all over his beefy little body.

When my husband and I want to make Oscar feel bad, we tell him he’s “pet quality.” That’s the phrase the breeder used when explaining why we could have our fat little French Bulldog at a discount. “See his nose?” he asked, pointing at the pink shnozz speckled with black. “It’s what they call a dudley, and it’ll disqualify him from the breed standard. Unless that nose fills in, he won’t be show quality.”

As it happens, his nose did fill in, and people at the dog park began asking whether he was a show dog. “He has excellent conformation,” observed one gentleman as Oscar chewed maniacally on his Pug’s back leg. This is not the kind of stuff I like to talk about at the dog park. I’d much rather hear about how one woman’s Pit Bull ate human feces off the street, and top it with the story of how Oscar not only ate human feces off the street, but later regurgitated it on my pants. But dog-show people would much rather talk about stuff like good conformation.

The idea of Oscar as a show dog wasn’t particularly appealing. I had no desire to run around a ring in grandma pumps and thick nude hose, and since we’d had Oscar neutered soon after he started humping my husband’s head in the mornings, he wouldn’t be eligible anyway. But it did occur to me that perhaps I should be thinking about how a dog like this could be making me some money.

I realize that doesn’t sound good. I’m not all that mercenary, and I don’t believe in exploiting, racing, fighting, or embarrassing one’s domestic companions. But the fact was that I was the editor of a struggling nonprofit magazine and my husband was a freelance photographer. We both worked pervertedly long hours for very little money, and watching the hands-down cutest member of our family doing absolutely nothing with his marketable skills was, frankly, a little frustrating. If Oscar was going to spend all day sitting on the couch watching TV and occasionally barking for a treat, why couldn’t it be Kelsey Grammer’s couch? Why couldn’t the treat be dispensed by a nice young production assistant?

The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that Oscar had a real show-business future. Yes, he had flunked the section of puppy school where the dogs were tested on whether they could walk by a Snausage without stopping to eat it. Yes, he could clear a room with one fart. But he always sat very patiently for my husband’s camera, and even let himself be photographed in a fez, an eye patch, and a yarmulke (though not all at once). I didn’t want him to be the new Spuds McKenzie or anything, but a dog with his particular good looks could probably move a few units of, say, rug cleaner. Or life insurance. He could even be one of those sitcom dogs who acts as a punch line simply by waddling into the room. I pictured him snuggling into Loni Anderson’s ample cleavage, punctuating one of John Lithgow’s windy monologues with an exasperated snort, or looking sheepish when a leg of lamb goes missing at Bonnie Hunt and Craig T. Nelson’s big dinner party.

I had no idea how much dogs made as sitcom sidekicks, or from commercial residuals, but I figured it was enough to make sure Jeff and I could pay all our bills and maybe take a vacation that didn’t involve sleeping in his mom’s trailer in Fresno. As for Oscar, I doubted he would find the work too taxing. He lives to meet, sniff, and charm new people, so show business would be heaven to him. Plus, he wouldn’t grow up and sue Jeff and me for all his earnings that we’d spent on rent. If we allotted a certain percentage of his monthly take to all-natural dried-liver treats and plush hedgehogs, that would be plenty to keep him happy.

It’s not as if I was spending
all
my time thinking about how to make my dog famous. It’s more like, after a long day of work, when I was standing on the sidewalk listening to yet another person squeal over him and ask me a familiar series of questions—yes, he’s a Frenchie; two years old; from a breeder in the Central Valley; yes, his ears are naturally like that; no, he doesn’t have too many health problems, unless you count excessive flatulence—it seemed like only a matter of time before we ran into the person whose questions could actually change our fortunes.

So I wasn’t all that surprised the day Jeff came home from the park and announced that he had met a commercial director who had flipped over Oscar and said he would be perfect for a project she was scouting. It was all falling into place: the recognition, the jobs, the extra income from someone who almost wasn’t even working. Sure, maybe one of us would have to take a little time off work now and then to escort Oscar to auditions, grooming sessions, and cast parties. Maybe we’d even have to move to L.A. for a while. But it would be worth it.

Or it would have been. “I’m going to call her tomorrow,” I said to Jeff. “Can you give me the card?”

But my husband, chronic leaver of jackets, umbrellas, and ephemera, had managed to lose the director’s card somewhere in the eight blocks between the park and our apartment. Some fruitless searches through jeans pockets and bags followed, but that was that. My stubby, pet-quality dog had a moment of almost-fame, a nugget of recognition that could have avalanched into a gold mine of glory, fortune, exotic locations, and squeaky toys, and now it was over.

Naturally, I never forgave Jeff. Several months after he lost the director’s card, French Bulldogs were storming the media. Here was one selling savings plans for a bank. There was one sheepishly demonstrating the need for room freshener. A particularly ugly—probably show-quality—one showed up in the new Steve Martin–Queen Latifah comedy. They sold MP3 players, illustrated computer-graphics capabilities, lounged alongside models in fashion spreads. And none of them was Oscar.

Oscar likes to watch TV with me, and each time one of these impostors flickers by, I remind him, “That could have been you, dude. That should have been you. We should be watching this TV from Topanga Canyon.” He just blinks at me, but Jeff leaves the room every time.

[Editors’ Note]

Most dogs are indiscriminately enthusiastic about their meals. We who dish out the food, however, are often more curious. Holding up a spoonful of commercial dog food, we may wonder: What’s actually
in
this stuff and how might it taste? These next two essays, one written in 1989 by Ann Hodgman—before the advent of “gourmandized” dog food—and the other in 2006 by Rebecca Rose Jacobs (with a nod to Hodgman’s “analysis”), get to the heart of the matter. Affirming, perhaps, that nothing says lovin’ like something from your own oven!

No Wonder They Call Me a Bitch

The intrepid author experiments with dog food, so you—thank goodness—don’t have to.

[Ann Hodgman]

I’
VE ALWAYS WONDERED
about dog food. Is a Gainesburger really like a hamburger? Can you fry it? Does dog food “cheese” taste like real cheese? Does Gravy Train actually make gravy in a dog’s bowl, or is that brown liquid just dissolved crumbs? And what exactly are by-products?

Having spent the better part of a week eating dog food, I’m sorry to say that I now know the answers to these questions. While my Dachshund, Shortie, watched in agonies of yearning, I gagged my way through can after can of stinky, white-flecked mush and bag after bag of stinky, fat-drenched nuggets. And now I understand exactly why Shortie’s breath is so bad.

Of course, Gainesburgers are neither mush nor nuggets. They are, rather, a miracle of beauty and packaging—or at least that’s what I thought when I was little. I used to beg my mother to get them for our dogs, but she always said they were too expensive. When I finally bought a box of cheese-flavored Gainesburgers—after twenty years of longing—I felt deliciously wicked.

“Dogs love real beef,” the back of the box proclaimed proudly. “That’s why Gainesburgers is the only beef burger for dogs with real beef and no meat by-products!” The copy was accurate: meat by-products did not appear in the list of ingredients. Poultry by-products did, though—right there next to preserved animal fat.

One Purina spokesman told me that poultry by-products consist of necks, intestines, undeveloped eggs, and other “carcass remnants,” but not feathers, heads, or feet. When I told him I’d been eating dog food, he said, “Oh, you’re kidding! Oh,
no!
” (I came to share his alarm when, weeks later, a second Purina spokesman said that Gainesburgers do contain poultry heads and feet—but
not
undeveloped eggs.)

Up close, my Gainesburger didn’t much resemble chopped beef. Rather, it looked—and felt—like a single long, extruded piece of redness that had been chopped into segments and formed into a patty. You could make one at home if you had a Play-Doh Fun Factory.

I turned on the skillet. While I waited for it to heat up I pulled out a shred of cheese-colored material and palpated it. Again, like Play-Doh, it was quite malleable. I made a little cheese bird out of it; then I counted to three and ate the bird.

There was a horrifying rush of cheddar taste, followed immediately by the dull tang of soybean flour—the main ingredient in Gainesburgers. Next I tried a piece of red extrusion. The main difference between the meat-flavored and cheese-flavored extrusions is one of texture. The “cheese” chews like fresh Play-Doh, whereas the “meat” chews like Play-Doh that’s been sitting out on the rug for a couple of hours.

Frying only turned the Gainesburger black. There was no melting, no sizzling, no warm meat smells. A cherished childhood illusion was gone. I flipped the patty into the sink, where it immediately began leaking rivulets of red dye.

As alarming as the Gainesburgers were, their soy meal began to seem like an old friend when the time came to try some
canned
dog foods. I decided to try the Cycle foods first. When I opened them, I thought about how rarely I use can openers these days, and I was suddenly visited by a long-forgotten sensation of can-opener distaste.
This
is the kind of unsavory place can openers spend their time when you’re not watching! Every time you open a can of, say, Italian plum tomatoes, you infect them with invisible particles of by-product.

I had been expecting to see the usual homogeneous scrapple inside, but each can of Cycle was packed with smooth, round, oily nuggets. As if someone at Gaines had been tipped off that a human would be tasting the stuff, the four Cycles really were different from one another. Cycle-1, for puppies, is wet and soyish. Cycle-2, for adults, glistens nastily with fat, but it’s passably edible—a lot like some canned Swedish meatballs I once got in a care package at college. Cycle-3, the “lite” one, for fatties, had no specific flavor; it just tasted like dog food. But at least it didn’t make me fat.

Cycle-4, for senior dogs, had the smallest nuggets. Maybe old dogs can’t open their mouths as wide. This kind was far sweeter than the other three Cycles—almost like baked beans. It was also the only one to contain “dried beef digest,” a mysterious substance that the Purina spokesman defined as “enzymes” and my dictionary defined as “the products of digestion.”

Next on the menu was a can of Kal Kan Pedigree with Chunky Chicken. Chunky
chicken
? There were chunks in the can, certainly—big, purplish-brown chunks. I forked one chunk out (by now I was becoming callous) and found that while it had no discernible chicken flavor, it wasn’t bad except for its texture—like meat loaf with ground-up chicken bones.

In the world of canned dog food, a smooth consistency is a sign of low quality—lots of cereal. A lumpy, frightening, bloody, stringy horror is a sign of high quality—lots of meat. Nowhere in the world of wet dog foods was this demonstrated better than in the fanciest I tried—Kal Kan’s Pedigree Select Dinners. These came not in a can but in a tiny foil packet with a picture of an imperious Yorkie. When I pulled open the container, juice spurted all over my hand, and the first chunk I speared was trailing a long gray vein. I shrieked and went instead for a plain chunk, which I was able to swallow only after taking a break to read some suddenly fascinating office equipment catalogs. Once again, though, it tasted no more alarming than, say, canned hash.

Still, how pleasant it was to turn to
dry
dog food! Gravy Train was the first I tried, and I’m happy to report that it really does make a “thick, rich, real beef gravy” when you mix it with water. Thick and rich, anyway. Except for a lingering rancid-fat flavor, the gravy wasn’t beefy, but since it tasted primarily like tap water, it wasn’t nauseating either.

My poor Dachshund just gets plain old Purina Dog Chow, but Purina also makes a dry food called Butcher’s Blend that comes in Beef, Bacon & Chicken flavor. Here we see dog food’s arcane semiotics at its best: a red triangle with a
T
stamped into it is supposed to suggest beef; a tan curl, chicken; and a brown
S,
a piece of bacon. Only dogs understand these messages. But Butcher’s Blend does have an endearing slogan: “Great Meaty Tastes—without bothering the Butcher!”
You know, I wanted to buy some meat, but I just couldn’t bring myself to bother the butcher.

Purina O.N.E. (“Optimum Nutritional Effectiveness”) is targeted at people who are unlikely ever to worry about bothering a tradesperson. “We chose chicken as a primary ingredient in Purina O.N.E. for several reasonings [
sic
],” the long, long essay on the back of the bag announces. Chief among these reasonings, I’d guess, is the fact that chicken appeals to people who are—you know—
like
us. Although our dogs do nothing but spend eighteen-hour days alone in the apartment, we still want them to be
premium
dogs. We want them to cut down on red meat, too. We also want dog food that comes in a bag with an attractive design, a subtle typeface, and no kitschy pictures of slobbering Golden Retrievers.

Besides that, we want a list of the nutritional benefits of our dog food—and we get it on O.N.E. One thing I especially like about this list is its constant references to a dog’s “hair coat,” as in “Beef tallow is good for the dog’s skin and hair coat.” (On the other hand, beef tallow merely provides palatability, while the dried beef digest in Cycle provides palatability
enhancement.
)

I hate to say it, but O.N.E. was pretty palatable. Maybe that’s because it has about 100 percent more fat than, say, Butcher’s Blend. Or maybe I’d been duped by the packaging; that’s been known to happen before. As with people food, dog snacks taste much better than dog meals. They’re better looking too. Take Milk-Bone Flavor Snacks. The loving-hands-at-home prose describing each flavor is colorful; the writers practically choke on their own exuberance. Of bacon they say, “It’s so good, your dog will think it’s hot off the frying pan.” Of liver: “The only taste your dog wants more than liver—is even more liver!” Of poultry: “All those farm fresh flavors deliciously mixed in one biscuit. Your dog will bark with delight!” And of vegetable: “Gardens of taste! Specially blended to give your dog that vegetable flavor he wants—but can rarely get!”

Well, I may be a sucker, but advertising
this
emphatic just doesn’t convince me. I lined up all seven flavors of Milk-Bone Flavor Snacks on the floor. Unless my dog’s palate is a lot more sensitive than mine—and considering that she steals dirty diapers out of the trash and eats them, I’m loath to think it is—she doesn’t detect any more difference in the seven flavors than I did when I tried them.

I much preferred Bonz, the hard-baked, bone-shaped snack stuffed with simulated marrow. I liked the bone part, that is; it tasted almost exactly like the cornmeal it was made of. The mock marrow inside was a bit more problematic: in addition to looking like the sludge that collects in the treads of my running shoes, it was bursting with tiny hairs.

I’m sure you have a few dog-food questions of your own. To save us time, I’ve answered them in advance.

Are those little cans of Mighty Dog actually branded with the sizzling word
BEEF,
the way they show in the commercials?

You should know by now that that kind of thing never happens.

Does chicken-flavored dog food taste like chicken-flavored cat food?

To my surprise, chicken cat food was actually a little better—more chickeny. It tasted like inferior canned pâté.

Was there any dog food that you just couldn’t bring yourself to try?

Alas, it was a can of Mighty Dog called Prime Entree with Bone Marrow. The meat was dark, dark brown, and it was surrounded by gelatin that was almost black. I knew I would die if I tasted it, so I put it outside for the raccoons.