Sausage Diet

'Seems like a hell of a lot of dog food for two whippets.’ John moans as we rope him into the human conveyor belt to ferry the slippery, plastic-covered sausages of meat from the delivery boxes into the kitchen.

‘Oh shush.’ I pass him a sausage and he passes it onto Brian who is stacking them neatly (rather anally actually) into the freezer.  ‘It’s all been worked out scientifically; they ask you loads of questions about your dog, like age, weight, how active they are and stuff like that, then they send you the EXACT right amount for a whole month.’

‘A month! There’s enough here for a year.’

The dogs watch on in silent disbelief.

'Sarah!' Brian calls out, his head in the freezer. ‘We’re going to have to eat these fish fingers and ice cream tonight. And the ciabbatta and these burgers and whatever this is. There’s no more room in here.’

I counted, there were 62 of the fat sausages, each one is about a foot long and jam-packed with crushed chicken, beef or lamb – bones and all. Yuck! 

‘Sixty-two, I suppose that works out at one a day each for a month.’ I slit one open and the contents burst out and ooze all-over the work surface. I long for the days before we were educated about our pets needs and could guiltlessly shake a few dried biscuits into a bowl.

Needless to say the mutts can’t get enough of the stinky mush. We were just coming to the last few sausages when yesterday the charming man from Darlings Dog Food rang to see if I was ready to place another order. 

‘How are Enzo and Capri getting on with it?’ he enquires

'Great thanks. They love it.'

‘Same again then?’ he asks. ‘Next Friday OK for delivery?’

‘Yes, that’s fine. Thanks. Do you have my credit card details from last time?’

‘Yes Mrs Munro, all here on our encrypted system.’

‘Lovely, see you next week then. Bye. Thank you!’

‘They’re very nice there.’ I say to Brian. A few seconds later a copy of my order appears in my email. ‘And really efficient.’

Then the phone rings.

‘Mrs Munro? It’s Derek form Darlings dog food. I was just looking back at your first order, the one you placed last month, and there appears to be a typing error on it. Instead of 2.5 kilos of the chicken it says 25 kilos. The decimal point was in the wrong place. I don’t suppose the warehouse actually sent you 25 kilos did they?’

Silence

‘Or did they?’

‘I don’t, I don’t know. What does 25 kilos look like? How many ‘sausages’ would that be?' My mind’s racing.

‘Well, lets see. Each sausage is about 500 grams so that would be about an extra…what? Forty to fifty sausages on that order.’

‘Oh my God!’

‘Don’t worry Mrs Munro.’ He senses my panic. ‘It’s entirely our fault. How much have the dogs actually been eating a day?’

‘I’m not sure…. About one sausage.’

'Between them?' He asks, trying to sound casual.

'Ummmm, no.  More like one each. How much are they supposed to have a day then?'

‘Well… we normally suggest 3% of what they weigh and you said they weighed 12 kilos so, let me see, divided by 10 that would be about 1.2 divided by 3 that would be… between about a third to half a sausage a day.’

Oh dear. No wonder Capri can’t get off the sofa. She’s been eating her own bodyweight in food everyday for the last month.

Come on! Walkies!