Thursday, January 25, 2007

A woman in The Netherlands who uses her dogs to hunt in Austria has decided to give her dogs a new kind of treat: beer.

Terrie Berenden, a woman who owns a pet shop in Amsterdam, created a non-alcoholic beer for her dogs which is made from malt and a beef extract. The beer is called Kwispelbier (‘kwispelen’ means “wagging of a [dog’s] tail” in Dutch), and was put onto shelves just last week.

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

According to Berenden, owners can enjoy the new beer as well, but she also stated that it will cost owners about four times as much to drink the beer than to buy a ‘human beer.’ A bottle of the dog beer sells at about $2.14.

The slogan for the new dog beer is “a beer for your best friend” and Brenden hopes that the product will grab international attention. Requests for the beer are already coming from the United States, England and Japan.

“We are overwhelmed with it. From America, England and Japan we have (received) mail and we are just going to think about it, how we can bring it on the market there,” said Brenden.