camel meat treats for dogs

When I travelled to Central Australia recently, Penny, of course, stayed home.

The area around Uluru and Kata Tjuta is beautiful and is not a desert, as I had thought. It is a semi-arid landscape and has supported an ancient and living culture from time immemorial.

One of the most enjoyable activities I took part in was a dinner in the bush, called The Sounds of Silence. My friend and I arrived in a mundane way, on a tour bus, so we were thrilled to see another group arriving...

on camels!

The leaders of all the tours we did gave us lots of information about the camels who roam free in the centre of this continent. Basically, they don't belong there, but some farmers are now turning from running cattle to herding camels. Apparently the camels here are remarkably disease-free compared to camels in other parts of the world and many are exported to The Middle East.

We were told again and again that one way to control the overpopulation of camels might be to use them for meat, so I was interested to see this packet of dog treats for sale here in Melbourne, at Murphy Brothers.

Penny thought the treats smelled rather good, and when I gave her some, she gobbled them up!

camel meat as dog treats

In responding to Maggie and Mitch's comment on my post about the dog birthday party Penny attended on Sunday, I remembered that our hostess had gone to the trouble of preparing a special doggy-bag of treats for dogs with sensitive skins.

Penny hasn't eaten any yet, but I'm keen to see whether she likes the camel meat treats that were included. Our hostess gets them from a canine skin specialist, so I'm confident they won't cause Penny any allergies.

It's a strange thing that Australia has huge herds of camels roaming the interior. They are the one-humped camel, dromedaries. As I was looking around to try to find information about dog treats (I didn't find any), I came across an article about the attempt to start up an export market for camel meat and another Lonely Planet piece about what a pity it will be if the meat of camels is wasted when they are culled. (Apparently they are breeding up to plague proportions.)

I sure hope that if such an industry is started, the camels are treated humanely. We humans don't have a good record of treating our fellow animals well.