The Offering

As we were walking Pappy through our town's street fair, we were approached by someone promoting our food coop. She handed us a flyer, then surreptitiously offered a pressed rawhide bone trying to conceal it from a nearby wolfhound. "It's my last one" she said, and Pappy was clearly more deserving than any other dog in the vicinity.

I was almost loathe to take the bone since I knew what was coming. Our little Hamlet was going to whine and groan and angst and carry the bone everywhere without taking a single bite from it. For days he was going to stand by the door to take it outside, then stand by the door to go get it to bring back inside. And then the coup de grace. Every time I would sit down, he was going to come up, drop it in my lap, and stare at me. I can never figure out whether he wants me to keep it, throw it, or just suck on it a while to soften it up.

I did take the bone, and after two days of this I finally got tired of the ordeal. I took a gobbet of peanut butter and smeared it into the creases at one end, then I held it for him while he set to work. He likes it when I hold a chew for him because he can really bear down. He finished about a third of it over a couple of nights when it mysteriously disappeared. It's probably buried in the back yard. Pappy is a pathetic burier. He scratches a little furrow in the mulch and then scatters a couple of leaves over the top, so it will turn up when we rake.