When you start to ask other dog owners about what they feed their dogs, you immediately enter the world of dog wellness. We were advised on a recent walk to only change Benny’s diet and not follow medical advice on treatment. This was immediately suspect and shot down—but what if they were right? 

I’d never even consider their correctness if they told me the same thing when it comes to my own health or a human family member’s. It’s easier to enter the world of dog wellness, perhaps, because we’re making the choices for a creature of a different species. You really could never convince me to stop poisoning myself with martinis, no matter how many anti-alcohol pieces you put out, unless the situation became quite dire. Suddenly, though, I am willing to believe that carbohydrates and sugars are feeding Benny’s lymphoma. These are the types of things I was told 15 years ago by raw vegans and rejected for myself. Now I wonder whether I’m killing the nutrients in the local broccoli by steaming it over 118 degrees.

Everything about feeding dogs is so confusing. I had wanted to cook Benny’s food from the beginning; I had wanted maybe to feed him a vegetarian diet. But I could never figure out the right resources, the right balance. The information was diffuse, scattered, seemingly quacky and crackpot everywhere. I was told that I’d never be able to get him every nutrient he needed, and because he needed a consistent diet, I simply got the kibble recommended by the vet and would supplement it with other things: local eggs, steamed pumpkin and beets, nonfat yogurt, and eventually sardines canned in water with no salt—fed to him with chopsticks after his morning walk. The sardines are his favorite thing that he’s ever eaten, so a vegetarian diet was never really going to be in the cards. None of this seemed ideal, but I also don’t have a degree in veterinary nutrition and wasn’t about to embark on one. Maybe I should have.

Now, with his illness, I am considering cooking meat. A lot of vegan and vegetarian dog owners have gone through this struggle; I know that. I also know that to omnivores—the majority of people, I’m well aware—this hesitance will seem utterly silly. All the resources suggest that a very high protein diet is necessary right now, and I’m willing to indulge the patient curiosity he’s always displaying in front of the supermarket meat racks (even if I won’t be getting his food there).

In my food essay class, I teach Jonathan Kauffman’s “Get Fat, Don’t Die” about a zine put out during the AIDS crisis, and I keep having the title going over and over in my head. We had Benny lose weight because we were told he was overweight; once we got to his “goal weight” of 70 pounds, he has lymphoma. I kind of see how people start to mistrust doctors and lose their minds. When he had no symptoms but the doctors were regarding him as quite ill to us, I kept wanting to scream, Are you treating Benny or are you treating a test result? I can easily imagine the same happening in a human doctor’s office; I can easily imagine going off the deep end in search of answers that make sense, that feel doable, that protect our agency.

I’m keeping my wits about me. Primarily, we need to keep him eating; we need to keep him as plump as possible, as energetic as possible, with an ample appetite. Martha Stewart, who has a farm, a team, and clearly extra freezer space, recently shared her own dog food prep process: She should write a dog cookbook. It would have saved me a lot of headaches and, perhaps, heartache.   

What is “wellness”? I had wanted to ask that question but when I started to read the literature, I found myself desperately bored by it. It’s not for me, when it comes to me, but apparently when it comes to my dog, I’m curious about red light therapy. I know how to feed myself a balanced diet, that my skincare routine only need be focused on keeping my dry skin hydrated, that my eczema flares when I do too many dishes; I know when something is out of whack, when my behavior and heart rate suggest I haven’t taken my thyroid pill, when it’s a panic attack.

Basically, I know how to take care of myself, and for now, I’m not at some grand risk of being swindled or convinced to do things by various pressures. That is learned and certainly hasn’t always been the case, but Benny is giving me a whole new way to feel like I actually don’t know anything at all. I’m reading the tea leaves of his appetite, his energy, his eyes. I’m steaming green beans, cutting them up, freezing them—and then watching him reject them repeatedly in a dietary dance I thought I’d avoided by not having kids.

Indeed, I didn’t want to be someone who would treat their dog as a child. Benny is our friend and our family, and in reality (and on paper), he is a service animal in that he keeps me regimented and forces me out of the house—I could not have written two books and kept this publication going and done all my other work without him—and so we’re trying our best to make sure he has the care due someone we have responsibility for in this situation. And so I might cook chicken, and he’s getting the recommended medical treatment. And so I’m going to figure this the fuck out, because if there’s one way I know how to exert my agency in a wild world, it’s in the kitchen.