Thanksgiving means turkey – great for humans, especially dogs. We love turkey! Raw, roasted, boiled, casseroled -- big yum BUT cooked bones are lethal. Dogs have incredible stomach acids and most of us – me, too! – digest raw poultry bones, but never ever feed cooked poultry bones. Cooking poultry bones makes them brittle, so they splinter and inflict terrible damage like ripping holes in a canine's esophagus, stomach, and intestines. In other words, cooked turkey bones can kill your best friend, canine or feline…

Dogs are really clever about getting into places where food's hiding. So you might want to make sure that your best animal friend(s) can't get into your trash. My human freezes garbage. We live in the country, and we don't have mice. But we do have a very disgruntled me. Heck, I must be in my 70s now and there's not much to do except sleep and eat, not necessarily in that order, with the occasional run outside to chase off deer, rabbits, or whatever, and carouse with my canine neighbors, but I digress…

Please secure your trash when you get rid of your turkey carcass — don't just bag the bones and toss them in the can. Wild animals can get into trash, easy-peasy – cooked bones are not good for wildlife either.

About those giblets – do you use them for gravy or shudder with disgust when you pull them out of your T-bird? If the latter, why don't you use the heart, gizzard, liver, and neck to make a lovely broth for your dog? Chop up the gizzards into the finished broth and refrigerate: Gizzard broth totally dresses up kibble. Dispose of the cooked turkey neck (re-read first paragraph).

(Re felines: I mentioned them once – please feel free to apply my suggestions about turkey to your cats, but be aware that they have different dietary needs than dogs – not that I have anything against cats. I love them. It's fun to chase them, but for me, it's even more fun when they stand up to me and play instead of running away… I do enjoy a feisty cat, but I digress… again… writing is hard.)

If you're into letting your best friends enjoy a bit of their *wolf heritage, you can freeze the gizzard, heart, and liver and feed them frozen, one at a time, to your pooch, who will go crazy over their pupsicle. *wolf heritage: your dog wasn't always a dog – surprise! Way back, long ago, like maybe 40,000 years ago, all domesticated dogs are descended from wolves in Tibet and Mongolia or Europe that went extinct. But I digress, once again.

Trust me: happy mornings are when I get a frozen chunk of raw local grass-finished beef heart or liver or kidney or a nice frozen marrow bone, followed by ¼ cup of kibble. Being frozen, they won't make a mess all over your kitchen floor or rugs. I have one particular area rug, just for me, where I get my breakfast pupsicles and marrow bones and any treats and bickies.

A word of caution: If you have never fed BARF (bones and raw food), hold off handing a thawed or frozen turkey neck to your pooch. Do your research. Read up on the subject. Get educated. Talk to your vet. Go online and look for BARF and raw dog food. Don't be a sheeple and follow a trend without investigating it thoroughly to see if it suits you and your lifestyle and, most importantly, your best canine friends.

I get my big meal in the evening. On T-Bird Day, I get turkey and some mashed cooked peas or green beans, maybe some cooked spinach. She won't give me potatoes, but I get a taste when she makes handmade egg noodles and pasta. I'm a lucky dog…

And she's really careful with what fats I eat. Everyone needs healthy fat in their diet – it's good brain food for humans, and I love a little butter or olive oil, but she's very careful to make sure any bacon we eat is nitrite/nitrate free. I love bacon fat on my kibble, but it does not love me. It makes me sick – awful yellow stuff.

If your best friend isn't back to normal in about 24 to 30 hours or so, you might want to call your vet, just in case it's something serious.

Oh, one thing this time of year – so good for us!!! Pumpkin puree – pure puree, not the pumpkin pie stuff with all the spices – nuh-uh, no no no! Pure pumpkin puree! Canned or cooked fresh – so good for us (oh, I already said that). You can look it up on the internet – good for lots of reasons. Really yum… Maybe my human will learn to make treats with pumpkin this year.

It's time for a snack and a nap…