Guilty as charged

Earlier today, someone reminded me of the guilt.

Taking on the responsibility of forgoing commercial kibble and making your pets' food is so much about learning as you go and about problem-solving-- and when for whatever reason you are unable to provide what you wish you could, it's easy to fall into guilt. I feel it all the time.

Feeling guilty that you can't afford the highest quality sources, that maybe if you pinched a few other pennies elsewhere maybe you could...

Or that maybe if you just rearranged your schedule you could find more time to grind or prepack the food instead of using bonemeal or premade raw this week...

Or that if you could just STOP WORRYING maybe you could bring yourself to feed larger raw meaty bones...

Or that maybe if you stopped buying new clothes ever again, you could afford to feed raw at all.

One of the best pieces of advice that I was ever given was when my uncle, who is every bit as neurotic as I am (thanks, genetics!), told me that if I could just accept that every decision I make will be the wrong decision, I'd feel a lot better.

It sounds so negative, but it's not. He just meant that you can spend the rest of your life second-guessing the decisions that you make. If you can just accept that the grass is always greener, that you can play "what if" forever, then you can learn to stop playing that game.

I guess what I'm getting at is that we all just do the best we can right now. That can take so many forms. When I was reading about raw feeding, there was a lot high-and-mighty, snotty, condescneding talk to people who were choosing not to feed raw or, weirdly enough, who were choosing to feed raw a different way (the divide between grinding or not, and using supplements or not are the biggest ones)-- without acknowledging that perhaps those choices, including the choice to feed dry food or canned food or cooked food or whatever, is indeed the best decision for that person and that pet at that time.

In everything, do all the research you can, do the best you can, and don't worry when someone else tells you you're doing it wrong-- you already knew that. ;-) Take their advice as one more datapoint and learn when to say that this decision is one you can live with and when this decision is one that you can't. I would love to feed all organic; I'd love to feed all free-range. I can't right now, but I'm always on the lookout for new sources, and I know that whatever I'm feeding them will be better than the meat in their kibble. I can live with that. If I couldn't get any organ meats around here, it might change my mind. I don't know if I could make a complete diet for them without them-- that would take some extra research. Choose the battles you fight with yourself.

The bottom like is, there are countless ways to beat yourself up in this life; your pets' food shouldn't be one of them.