Secret Snacks (or Dog Food Eaters Anonymous)

“Hello, my name is Carolyn, and I used to eat dogfood.”

How many others of us are out there? I think we’ll never know because of the stigma, the horrible adult realization of what you were actually eating when popping kibbles. Sometimes it just makes us want to forget.

We all had our preferences. I tended towards the canned, my older sister always had a pocket full of dry nuggets. Personally, I found those to be too gritty and dry. We always had dogs around the place, and I don’t remember specific brand loyalty when buying the dogfood. Knowing us, it was probably the cheapest. The only brand of canned I recall is Skippy. Such a cute name! Skippy; if I’d have thought about it, I would have tried to name one of our dogs Skippy. The whole process of preparing the food is a three-dimensional memory. I can feel the weight of the can as I twist and twist the little can opener until the lid is free. The lovely meaty aroma begins to escape. Then I turn it over carefully, holding the loose lid in place with my finger and open the other end too. Turning it over the dog dish, I then get to do the fun part. Kkshuuush! I push on one lid and the can-shaped mass slides out intact into the bowl, like a cylindrical Jello mold. Only brown. Little white dots speckled the creamy “meat,” and I could never figure out what they were, but now I tell myself that it was probably rice.

Some of the kids snuck big slabs to munch on, but I contented myself with a bit here and there. After all, it was the dog’s rightful meal!

I still remember giving my mother the best complement I could think of on her cooking. “This meatloaf is great! It’s almost as good as dogfood!”