It's all Dog Meat to me.

[Zeno]

The Dog Posts and Veggie Posts inspired this post. Sort of. I read the Journals of Lewis and Clark years ago and recalled the fondness most of the men had for doggie stew. So I did a little internet search and also reread some of the Lewis and Clark Journals.

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Did you know that the Corps of Discovery frequently ate dogs?

Puppy chops haven't made it into any of the recent cookbooks offering recipes from the Lewis and Clark expedition, but the Indians ate dogs and so did the members of the expedition when nothing else was available.

In the dry areas of what is now eastern Washington, in fact, where there was little if any game and the only other choice was dried salmon, usually impregnated with sand, the men came to prefer dog.

Their favorite foods were always elk, beaver tail, and buffalo, and when they were struggling up the Missouri the men ate prodigious amounts of it, up to nine pounds of meat per man per day. But dogs would do if dogs were all that they could get. Only Clark abstained. He couldn't bring himself to eat dog meat.

Link for above, and additional, information



October 18, Friday – 1805 [purchasing food for the men on the Columbia River, entry by Clark]

The fish being very bad those which was offerd to us we had every reason to believe was taken up on the shore dead we thought proper not to purchase any, we purchased forty dogs for which we gave articles of little value, such as beads, bells & thimbles, of which they appeared verry fond,…..

The Journals of Lewis and Clark, edited by Bernard DeVoto, p. 254, paperback edition [DeVoto did not edit the journals for minor spelling or grammar errors]

Posted for the edification of all.

-Zeno: Dog-eating atheist and necrophilic misanthrope.