Man's Best Friend Food

Penny - Wild Dog

Penny Food - Wild Elk

Penny is the Mexican Chihuahua that daughters Jennifer and Maria rescued from a nearby branch of the Arizona Humane Society. When the girls found her she was very little, very weak from two surgical procedures, and pathetic looking - just laying on your arm or shoulder not wanting to move around too much. I do not know what these girls were thinking then but Penny is now MY BABY!

My goal is to turn her into a very uncharacteristic Chihuahua. I give her marrow-filled raw bones, which she chews on with gusto and intensity and then buries in the dirt and digs up later. We take her lots of different places in the outdoors. She hikes up and down mountains in the Phoenix Mountain Preserve and does very well jumping around on the rocks and boulders. She spends time outdoors doing the things many dogs never get to do in order to fulfill their  true "doghood". She is about as wild as a Chihuahua can get! She is a primal dog with adequate training.

This requires a lot of energy. I have elected to not subject this magnificent beast to the SADD (Standard American Dog Diet). She eats the innards, skin and meat pickings from the organic chickens we buy, mixtures of salmon or tuna, and beef. She eats eggs when we eat them. We mix the meats with a small amount of rice sometimes and always larger portions of cooked squash, assorted vegetables, or pumpkin. Raw beef bones are supplied on a regular basis.

So how does gathering enter into this post? The food seen above is from another recently discovered  bag of frozen elk. These pieces of meat are very flavorful, but our human jaws would seize up trying to chew them. Not the best cuts of elk. Penny makes short work of this meat. The carbs are from a leftover Halloween pumpkin stored in our freezer. Don't mess with this Chihuahua.