I have a strange canine.....

[osodecanela]

Arjuna is an odd beast.

Canines are supposedly carnivores, or at the very least omnivores. My beast has a sweet tooth, something I'm certain he has gotten from my husband.

It started (I found out recently) last year on their walks. It's my husband's habit to walk down the hill to the coffee shop for his AM latte. The local psych clinic counseling center is at the end of our road, across the highway from the baristas. The clinic always has donuts for their clients as well as the local homeless, and so my husband stops for his morning goody.

Arjuna figured if it's good for daddy, then it's good for me. I found out about this last week when LJ was lecturing Arjuna. "No more than one donut dog. Too much sugar makes you too wild." That's when I found out about the clinic's baked goods.

"You've been feeding him donuts every morning?"
"Ummm, yeah."
"for crissakes LJ, he's a dog!"
"but he likes them."

I won't elaborate here, but suffice it to say, I had a few choice words for him, words not fit for mixed company.

And he wonders why often the dog food just sits in his bowl.

Anyway, the dog does go nuts for some healthy things. I have a love for persimmons. I have friends with trees and every year, I get gifted with plenty of persimmons. Now persimmons are the zucchini of the fruit world. The trees
are often very prolific and it's a fruit most people have little idea how to use.

I dry them. I have a convection food dryer, one with a dozen trays. In just 24 hours they're ready for airtight containers & I have persimmons for the year. Nicely chewy & sweet, but not too sweet. I love them this way. So does Arjuna.

When the dog sees me with dried persimmon, he goes ape. He does every trick he can think of. He sits. He offers his paw. He lies down. He barks. If none of that works, he whines. Then he barks really, really loud. There is nothing else he goes that crazy for.

Persimmons? A dog treat? Who knew?

Comments

[paterson-si.livejournal.com]

Well, our friends dog lives apples.... and not only those really sweet ones. She would kill for apples. :)

[robearal.livejournal.com]

My sister had a cat who would stare at you and smack her lips if you ate donuts around her.

[epinoid.livejournal.com]

My childhood dog-buddy loved to eat fruit - he would pull apples, peaches, plums, and pears from our neighbor's trees. He liked grapes from a vine on the side of our house. He would also make laugh when we would pick raspberries and wild blackberries. He would find the ripest ones by smell and pull them off so gently he would leave the core on the vine. Bananas were the only thing he didn't quite enjoy - he would take a piece and mush it around but not swallow. Did I mention he was a 125+ pound German Shepherd!

[grizzlyzone.livejournal.com]

The late Hans, a red male dachshund, liked bananas and grapefruit.

He also had a thing for gauze, aluminum foil, and the crotch of my tighty-whiteys, but that's another story.

Canine toxins

[grizzlyzone.livejournal.com]

BTW, just so you know, chocolate is fatal at the rate of 1 lb. of chocolate per 10 lbs. of dog.

Raisins and grapes tend to cause kidney failure in dogs. They don't know why.

Macadamian nuts are also poisonous to dogs.

[tilia-tomentosa.livejournal.com]

Liza here loved melons, raisins and seet corn, and sometimes just a little piece of roasted red pepper. She didn't touch any other plant food.

[barbarian-rat.livejournal.com]

Dogs ... eat the oddest things...
But dried persimmon is very, very good.

[daddybear57.livejournal.com]

I once had a cat that loved cantaloupe! And most dogs like carrots 'cause they're sweet.