Where oh where can my doggie-bone be?
The ad ended with a great suggestion: “Don’t leave home without it”. The dog misunderstood, as she is wont to do, and she left home with it, and came home without it. No, not a magic card; rather, a prized bone.
My dog doesn’t get much in the way of bones. After all, I can’t afford to feed her in the way she would quickly become accustomed, so when a rare fragment of marrow-filled bovine comes her way, she shows signs of great territoriality. Don’t bug me. Can’t you see I’m busy. Go away. If dogs could speak clearly, that’s the message that we’d receive.
Hence my surprise when she left for a short tour outside, bone in muzzle. Was she planning on this trip lasting for more than a couple of minutes, given the falling temperature? Simple surprise morphed into astonishment when she returned without her prize. I asked, but she didn’t tell me anything. Dogs are funny that way.
Tomorrow, some neighbour is going to go out for a lawn walkabout, and there will be a bone. All alone, with no reason attached. What will the good neighbour assume? Did it fall from the butcher’s plane (with the cost of good steak, I’m sure he must own a Lear or two)? Was there a battle royal, and only this part of the losing competitor remained? Could the front yard be a killing field?
I’m sorry for the stress this will cause my poor neighbour. Perhaps I should just open the front door and explain to the dog the rules of urban existence. When you leave with a bone, you bring it back again. That way, there’s still something to do while the master sleeps, and you don’t leave the neighbour with an unsolved mystery. Life is too short.
