A chap was sitting against a wall in a street in central Dublin and, on a carpet of what seemed to be thick cardboard beside him, were three dogs. He was folding a rope which he used, apparently, as a lead for them. One was asleep. The other two, bright and alert, were shiny of coat and spruce and groomed. "What do you feed them on?" he was asked by a dog owner who has had problems with the diet of his own. The man reached out for a plastic bag and said "With the makings of Irish stew". And, sure enough, there was the meat and bones. That deserved a small contribution to the dogs. Yes, the meat was given to them raw.
If your dog, or your cat is out of sorts or is eating badly or even trying to eat too much, the only safe course is to consult the vet. Now, cats. There was, according to a survey done in England in the 1940s, analysing the effects of cooked and raw meat; in otherwise identical diets, fed to no less than 900 cats in controlled conditions over a 10 year period, a claim that those fed raw meat, did the following fed their offspring well, had good behaviour habits and high resistance to infection and parasites. But those fed on cooked meat showed poor reproduction, were difficult to handle and prone to allergies. This increased with each generation.
So ran a letter in Country Life. Dublin cats of a friend were fed chicken - chicken bits, boiled up at the weekend and doled out during the week along with the dry, crunchy cat food you buy in the supermarket. As for dogs, like humans they have their needs and oddities. One labrador had to go over to a vegetarian diet for health reasons - vegetables, apples, grapes, if she could get them. And, says her owner, if anyone, anywhere in the house started to peel an orange, the dog was at the scene of action in a few seconds. No fish. Not even smoked salmon. She lived a good, long life. And, oddly enough, she must have been different from most of her labrador tribe. For three letters in the same magazine tell of labradors as eating "absolutely anything". One steals out in autumn to the brambles, having a yen for blackberries. Another reader tells of his labrador carefully digging out new potatoes with one paw and eating them, and of eating wild strawberries from the plant without damaging it. Another labrador picks gooseberries delicately from the bushes and has now progressed to plums. A Cavalier King Charles has an indulgent owner who not only peeled grapes for her pet but de seeded them. If in doubt - see your vet.