A History Lesson: What Dogs Were Fed Before The Industrial Revolution
Before the industrial revolution, canine nutrition for working class dogs was much like the diet of their working-class owners - basic, simple, and sometimes not very good. Although they worked all day within a whisker of glistening sides of beef or lamb, dogs were lucky to get anything beyond a crust of bread or a greasy knuckle of bone. Other dogs fared a little better, although their diets also were identical to those of their peasant masters - meatless fare consisting of bread, potatoes, onions, and boiled cabbage. In general, the greater the wealth and status of the master, the more varied the diet of the dog. Canine dinners of the rich were lavish, for instance, including succulent bits of roast duck, cakes, and candied nuts or fruit.
The Chinese empress Tzu-tsi was said to have ordered her beloved Pekingese amply fed with “shark’s fins, curlew’s livers, and the breasts of quails … and for drink, tea that is brewed from spring buds or the milk of the antelope that pasture in the Imperial Park.”
Dogs belonging to urban working-class owners in the mid 1800’s fared somewhat better than their peasant predecessors. According to art historians, it was common in cities like New York and London to purchase rations of horse meat for dogs and cats, “since horses were dropping dead in the street everyday, the passersby scarcely sparing them a glance as the contractor haggled over the price of a carcass with the cat’s meat man.” These inexpensive cuts of meat, combined with varied leftovers from their master’s table, meant that many Victorian urban dogs enjoyed richly varied diets.
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, as pets came to be regarded as luxury items, the question of how best to maintain ones “investment” sparked new interest in canine nutrition. Fanciers were inspired to look beyond breeding and grooming for additional ways to “civilize” and elevate the canine race. In an era when medical breakthroughs cast new light on the world of microbes, the gastrointestinal tract was viewed as a brewery of disease fueled by a diet of bulky, unprocessed vegetable matter, which could result in an array of maladies loosely categorized as “blood poisoning.”
Harsh, antiseptic high colonies and even radical “colectomies” - elective surgeries to remove healthy colons - were employed in conjunction with disciplined diets of heavily processed foods void of dietary fiber and generous doses of laxative tonics or candies. In essence, imposing a “modern” diet on the body became a means of controlling an embarrassing inner, natural world.
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