Yes they are spoilt. We hate the commercial dog foods. Too strong, too much protein, too much cost and no wonder dogs end up with health problems and eating special dietary food that happens to be supplied by vets.

My mother-in-law fed her dogs on bread soaked in meat juices, chicken legs and scraps. They lived long lives, in fact Zuzu is still going strong, and had no health scares. The ingredients in most dog foods includes minimal meat, a tonne of grains and additive minerals.

You can replicate this quite easily and the cats often bring in mice, voles and birds for the dogs too. It’s a very sweet gesture as it takes the cats time to catch these little guys. A mouse gives a dog or cat all the nutrient it needs.

So now it’s bit of a game, who eats their sausage first, or who can try and eat the other ones sausage, secretly, or hide theirs to bring it out later and show off! Lots of jealous driven strategies in the hound dog world and for Sake our male, white Jack Russell, it can be a whole afternoons task. He even has a special expression for it, a long face, half closed eyes with slightly raised eyebrows.

Bella usually just scoffs her food and then annoys Sake. It’s a dog life!

****Poppy is one of our last Rhode Island hens we had back in 2018. Slowly the girls have passed and this week Poppy has had a crop problem. Her crop, food pouch, isn’t emptying and this means she isn’t absorbing any nutrients, so she is getting thin. I have managed to massage it and in simple terms make her sick and bring all the gunk up.

Now on water with apple cider vinegar to clean out the crop and easy food like hard boiled eggs that can be easily digested, she seems a little better today. But it’s unlikely she will make a full recover as something internally isn’t working efficiently. I lost Apple and Eloise just last week due to similar malfunctions of their digestive tracts, it was heartbreaking and I decided to film two necropsies I carried out to show why they passed and closure for myself as its very upsetting when you arrive at the coop, and the little gang rush out to greet you, but two little characters are not there 😢.

But life goes on, and soon I am taking in another group of hens. There will be squabbles, arguments about who sits where on the perches, territory issues, queues for the same egg box even though there will eight to choose from and me getting to name them and see their characters emerge. It will be fun, feathery and the cycle begins again.