Have a Heart

Most people who know me know that my wife is a vegetarian. She’s not one of those annoying vegetarian who thinks she’s saving the world and everyone should line up behind her, she’s simply made a choice and honors others choices. Most of all, she understands that her animals not only should get meat, but actually require it. She’s spent a lot of time studying animal nutrition and wants to introduce more “real” meat into our animals diet.

Recently, she put out the call to friends and coworkers that, if they go deer hunting, they save the heart for our dogs. Well it just so happened that a gunshot-wounded deer staggered out of the woods in our neighborhood and died in our neighbor’s yard. After a few seconds of mourning, she ran out to request the heart for the dogs. Our neighbor, also a hunter, had already called his butcher friend to process the deer and within an hour she got her wish. She carried the bloody freezer bag the same way she would carry a dirty diaper. I knew I’d be the one serving up the heart to our dogs.

Now, the idea here is to provide a meal similar to what wolves would eat. Neither of us want to have to clean bloodstains off the floor & walls, so we decided to boil it. I chose a night where the wife was out of the house for a few hours, for obvious reasons. I boiled it for about a half hour, until it looked cooked. Then chopped it up into bite size pieces. The dogs don’t smell real meat very often and get pretty enthusiastic about it when they get the chance. I figured the small bites would prevent any potential choking.

The whole process was pretty disgusting, but at the same time appealed to that primal, caveman side that I believe all men have. You know, the side of your personality that wants get into a fight after watching a real good action movie? That’s the side I’m talking about. It smelled kind of steak-ish and, once it was chopped up, looked pretty much like steak too. One heart split between 4 dogs doesn’t go very far, so I mixed it up in some dry food. How did it go over? They loved it.