On just about every day of the year, Shadow and Custer enjoy a hearty diet of kibbles and the occasional leftover piece of challah or gefilte fish.
But come Yom Kippur Tuesday evening, these dogs — Shadow’s a 16-pound poodle, Custer, a 26-pound schnauzer — follow the lead of their owner, Cheryl Degani: They fast.
“It was my idea,” says Degani, a 59-year-old accountant from suburban New City and mother of two adult children.
Growing up in the Rockland County town of Hillcrest, she was always a little more zealous than everyone around her, she says, and began fasting on the Day of Atonement even before her bat mitzvah, at age 12.
“People say, ‘Are you kidding me? Are you for real?’ ” she says of her decision to have her dogs observe the holiday with her. “I say: I have to fast, they have to fast.”
Those concerned about whether fasting affects her pets’ health can bark off, Degani says.
“I can leave my dogs food all day long, but if I’m not there, they’re not eating it,” says Degani, who nevertheless makes sure her pups’ water bowls are never empty. “Dogs are social — a dog doesn’t want to eat until I get home and I’m there.”
It’s kosher with the experts, too.
“If you have an otherwise healthy dog, then it’s probably not a huge deal,” says Dr. Danielle Palatt, of Brooklyn’s Vinegar Hill Veterinary Group. “Missing two meals isn’t necessarily a health risk for a healthy animal — even if they don’t understand what’s going on.”
But they do understand, insists Degani, whose dogs are fluent in fasting. They know the drill for many Jewish holidays, she says, and believes they definitely smell something in the air just before Yom Kippur.
“I think they have a Jewish essence,” she says. “There’s no doubt about it.”
They may not have been bark mitzvahed, she adds, but they feel religion down to their Milk Bones: “They know a lot. They know something [is going on]” on the big day.
