Our dog, Riley, is one of the most laid-back, Type B, chillin’-like-a-villain pups that we’ve ever had.
Except when it comes to his food.
We feed our dogs twice a day—once in the morning and once around our dinner time.
While his sister (through adoption, of course) Mae loves to eat, sometimes Riley seems like he couldn’t care less.
Let me describe Mae and food times: all you have to say to her is “Are you hungry?” and you would think that she just won the Doggie Lottery. (If you know me in real life, no, we did not get another dog; she just prefers to use a pseudonym. She’s bossy that way.)
She jumps and spins like Stevie Nicks in a music video. She even does this little dance that we refer to as her “dinner dance.” You know, because we’re creative people like that.
Getting fed is the absolute highlight of Mae’s day.
The highlight of Riley’s day is playing—doesn’t matter if he chases a ball we’ve thrown or a stick he’s brought to us, or if we play tug with one of the many cloth toys that he’s disemboweled of its stuffing. That boy lives to have fun.
But he has to take some medicines that must be taken with food. Getting him to eat when we want him to is like getting your kid to eat something like Brussel sprouts, lima beans, or beets. It’s near impossible.
Before you suggest that we try another food—trust us; it’s not the food. We have to feed Riley a special diet, which is not only really good for him, but also costs a ton. But he would rather eat an egg or chicken or pretty much anything other than his food.
He’s been like this since we adopted him, and we tried many, many kinds of foods back then.
Eventually, Riley will eat, but it has to be on his terms. Our friend said that Riley acts like we give him caviar, but he prefers the beer-budget foods. Like he’d turn up his nose at French cuisine, but would absolutely love fried bar food.
(Before you tell me that he shouldn’t eat fried food, again, trust me—he doesn’t. He just wants everything under the sun except his own food.)
In the morning, my husband Brad always puts something on Riley’s food so that he will eat—something, anything!—because he has to take his pills. We’ve discovered that Riley is way too smart for his own good.
Here’s how it goes: Brad heats up green beans. Our dogs love green beans. Mae chows them and her food down in no time.
Riley, however, will sometimes eat all the green beans and leave his food. He will literally eat around his food.
What we’ve come to learn is that when he does this, Riley is telling us that he either wants chicken on his food or a scrambled egg. Because we have to get him to take his pills, we do this.
It’s like we’ve grown up to be two successful, kind, funny adults who spent their lives as servants to our dogs. If he could read, I’m sure that Riley would demand a menu each day.
In addition to not wanting to eat his food, Mr. Persnickity also doesn’t like to eat from his bowl anymore. This began three years ago, when our $10,000 dog, as we jokingly call him, needed to get knee surgery—first on one, then on the other six months later. At the time, we were doing physical therapy at home on Riley. While he was healing, he had problems eating from his bowl. So we started putting his food on a paper plate.
Big mistake.
Now King Dog expects us to “plate” all his food. Even though he has completely healed and can do absolutely everything he was able to do before his surgeries, Riley has decided that he will never eat his food from a bowl again.
He’ll drink his water out of the bowl (and they are the same kinds of bowls, so it’s not that). In fact, now that I think about it, he continued to drink water out of the bowl the entire time he was recovering. I hadn’t realized this before now.
He’s got us wrapped around his little paws even more than I ever thought.
Michele Wojciechowski, when she’s not playing Rachael Ray to her dogs, writes Wojo’s World® from Baltimore. She’s also the author of the award-winning humor book Next Time I Move, They’ll Carry Me Out in a Box. You can connect with Wojo on Facebook or on Twitter.
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