[yipyap]

It is interesting to read all the variety of our owners' viewpoints on dog & cat foods. The pet food manufacturing industry took off in our country in the 1900's, as more and more people here began keeping family pets in the new suburban home developments and started to rely on the ready made pet foods sold in the local grocery stores. Our daughter was in the Peace Corp in Ukraine in 2006-9 and when she tried explaining to her first host family (who owned a cat) that in the United States people would purchase "ready-made pet foods", they felt so sorry for our animals eating the same dietary product day after day. She said there were few "grocery stores" in rural Ukraine, and these were only found in large cities and even these groceries were not like the big U.S. grocery stores. People from her vilage were intrigued to have seen a few "packaged pet foods" in the city grocery store and assumed they were for "emergencies"! Her host family fed their cat with homemade food they made from their own leftover, cooked foods--chopped meats & veggies. She said the cat seemed very healthy and would happily eat from its bowl each p.m. the mixture of scraps the mother prepared from their leftovers. (They ate more pork and fish there, chicken and beef was much more expensive.) Apparently, most families in her small rural town had pet birds or cats. Rural dogs were considered expensive and not kept indoors. Now, she saw some living on farms to guard livestock. Dogs in cities were the smaller breeds, but were often considered to be an added expense by most families. One of our daughter's Peace Corp buddies bought a s**tzu puppy in Kiev and paid $200.00 for it--which was expensive in Ukraine--and made her own cooked mixtures of food based on the lady breeder's recommendations. Yes, "Mishka" did get all her shots and did come back with her owner to live in the U.S.A., after passing all her tests. I guess she finally got used to U.S. dog foods, plus healthy scraps from her owner. What a choice owners have here!!