In an effort to distract myself from current health issues (apparently 40 is the new 110), I picked up a 50 cent copy of the April 2012 Country Living and start flipping through the pages of flea market finds, cedar gazebos, and vine-ripened tomatoes, in reds and green pretty enough to frame. I think about how great it would be to slice those babies up and shove them between bacon and lettuce.
I skip past Easter eggs covered with temporary tattoos of larks and butterflies. I pass a page on how to prettify your potting shed. I lament that I have no potting shed. And then I come to this. 
Are you kidding me? I like dogs, people, but are you freaking kidding me? This is nicer than my freshman college dorm wall-pull-out bed. This is nicer than my junior year’s papasan, which by the way, Pier 1 still sells. 
Because who doesn’t love the marriage of a satellite dish balanced on a wicker frame? BTW, do they sell pagers to go with them? And bottles of Clearly Canadian? And cassettes from Toad the Wet Sprocket?
If your dog is a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, then, yes, he needs a $70 monogrammed canvas bed or a $208 linen sleeper. Heck, why not get him a Select Comfort bed while you’re at it? To think of all those childhood Christmases I spent sleeping on a shag-carpeted floor with a sheet and a blanket at my grandparents’ house, and I could have had a doggie duvet? Psh!
Look, before my son was born, I thought my dog had hung the moon. I brushed his teeth, I took him jogging, I trimmed his nails, he slept inside my home. Now my two dogs stay in the backyard, free to run and irritate one another, lucky to get a daily pat on the head from me, along with a heartworm pill every month. That’s reality. I roll my eyes and scan the adjacent page. Apparently, this is the dog-themed section: 
Real meat? No corn, wheat, or soy? Are dogs gluten-intolerant now? My childhood dog ate his own poo. I can say with certainty that he’d be down with corn and soy. If your lifespan only averages a decade, I say live it up.
Now, I know two years have passed since this product came out, and folks are free to do as they wish with their disposable income. But viewing it, in combination with the plush dog beds, made me think how delighted a homeless person would be to enjoy either. Or someone in a Third World country, sleeping in a dirt hut, drinking contaminated water, feasting on seeds. I bet they’d love a plastic tub of Chicken Paw Pie (with real chicken paws!). 
The folks at http://www.dogfoodadvisor.com say the Hearty Beef Stew contains beef broth, beef, dried egg product, chicken, pea protein, potatoes, carrots, and peas, as well as many vitamin supplements. If it looks and sounds better than McDonald’s, it probably is.
So what’s in a Big Mac? Two all-beef patties? All-beef? Isn’t that the meat that lives forever? I’m sure it’s great, now that the pink slime has been removed. Remember this picture from last April’s big news story?
That burger was from 1999. Yes, before the Twin Towers fell. Before any of today’s high school freshmen were BORN, that meat existed. Ew.
And let’s not forget the bun, made of bleached white flour, with a dash of ammonium sulfate, ammonium chloride, and a whole lotta other junk I can’t pronounce. Plus four sesame seeds on top. Pair that with a square of rubbery processed American cheese and the Special Sauce (soybean oil, pickle relish, distilled vinegar, water, egg yolks, high fructose corn syrup, onion powder, mustard seed, salt, spices, propylene glycol alginate, sodium benzoate, mustard bran, sugar, garlic powder, vegetable protein, caramel color, extractives of paprika, soy lecithin, turmeric, calcium disodium EDTA), and you’re in business!
It’s enough to make you resort to a box of Triscuits!
The bonus is–your dog will eat Triscuits, too. But only the flavored kinds. Dogs are picky like that.
