Presents

Have you ever received a present you didn’t like? It can be awkward. You know the giver is trying to be nice and has put a lot of time and thought into getting something really nice. But sometimes you really can’t stand the gift. In my case the bad gifts are usually edible or chewable or both. There have been cookies from gourmet dog bakeries and countless bones and chews and dried body parts from larger animals. I try to be polite because I don’t want to discourage presents. Many of them have been great like Ducky and the buffalo bone. I don’t want humans thinking I’m ungrateful. What’s a dog to do?

All winter I was given pigs’ ears as an après ski treat. (They were on the slopes, not me.) The first one was kind of interesting, but week after week it was the same. I just got sick of them. And they seemed to be getting bigger every Saturday. Finally I hid the last one. I stuck it in a corner, hoping my owners would think I cherished it so much, I was saving it for later. After a while they got the hint and starting giving me cheddar cheese instead. Muenster I hid.

If I get some gross animal chew that I really can’t even play with, I take it upstairs and put it under the bed or in a shoe in the back of the closet. My owners think I’ve eaten it all and they forget all about it. That worked really well until Avalanche came over. I love her dearly but she’ll eat anything. As soon as she came in the door, she smelled 5 bones and rawhides and got them all out. And it was the same today when Pica came over. She ran upstairs and found the lamb bone I’d hidden.

And that was from the dog store in Breckenridge they took me into. There were so many good things there, and I ended up with dried up lamb bone. It’s too bad they don’t put out a basket and let us dogs pick out our own treats. The more it looks like real food, the less I like it, except of course if it is real food off the table. The more it smells like real food, the worse it tastes. Give me dehydrated liver or salmon and buffalo jerky. A nice smelly treat that you don’t have to pretend to like and hide somewhere.

That's Mijo and Pica up top,