The problem with posh dog food

Having loaded the last sack of working dog food in Surrey into my car, I slammed the trolley back into the trolley park and shouted an expletive at no one in particular.

‘What have you done to your lovely country store?’ I thought about asking one of the sales assistants inside the newly revamped posh dog food shop that used to be a warehouse for horse feed and pet supplies. But the likelihood was they didn’t care.

Shiny displays with video presentations about the latest craze in frozen ‘fresh’ ready meals for dogs now took up most of the space, along with aisle upon aisle of extremely expensive pouches for pooches, those silly little cartons of allegedly organic dog food that I would have to feed in bulk to the point of bankruptcy to satisfy my lot.

I walked up and down the aisles for ages before finding three stray sacks of good old ‘Chudleys’, which still carries a royal warrant showing that it used to be By Appointment to the Queen. I would have King Charles down for the poochy pouches.

There was a Chudleys Working Crunch, an Original and a Salmon flavoured. They were running it down, obviously, on the basis that it was only £23 for a huge sack that is highly nutritious.

The spaniels’ preferred chicken and rice cartons were also in scant supply, no doubt because at £17.95 for 12 large servings it was judged to be way too much meat for the money.

The rest of the produce in this once great store was just the sort of nonsense the clueless classes would love to be charged any amount of money for, on the basis that the packaging told them how much they loved their dog.