Bending the Elbow With Your Pooch

[Ralph]

A cold one for man's best friend

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- After a long day hunting, there's nothing like wrapping your paw around a cold bottle of beer.



So Terrie Berenden, a pet shop owner in the southern Dutch town of Zelhem, created a beer for her Weimaraners made from beef extract and malt.

"Once a year we go to Austria to hunt with our dogs, and at the end of the day we sit on the veranda and drink a beer. So we thought, my dog also has earned it," she said.

Berenden consigned a local brewery to make and bottle the nonalcoholic beer, branded as Kwispelbier. It was introduced to the market last week and advertised as "a beer for your best friend."

"Kwispel" is the Dutch word for wagging a tail.

The beer is fit for human consumption, Berenden said. But at $2.14 (or 1.65 euro) a bottle, it's about four times more expensive than a Heineken.



Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/01 ... index.html

[Evelyn Laden]

If an American brewery had produced a dog treat like that, all Europeans would sigh and say "only in America.....," meaning only the crazy Americans would think up anything that outlandish. Once they read an article like this, they can no longer make such claims. At least, the Dutch don't get their pets pickled. That's something to be grateful for!

[jbuck919]

Reminds me of Neill, the alcoholic St. Bernard ghost dog in the old TV series "Topper."

(Disclamatory note before one of our younger members tries an experiment: All mammals other than humans are rendered violently ill by ethyl alcohol.)