Maggie and the 'Mailman' Cookie

Most Labs have a reputation as the garbage can dog. They will eat anything. Maggie is a complete exception to the rule. This fact was brought home to me recently when I gave her a vitamin in her dinner. Her response had me thinking of other dogs we have had.

Poko was a high energy dog. There wasn't much she did at medium speed. It was pretty much full-steam ahead. She was 10 years old before I noticed she was taking her time eating her meals. I timed her one day and it took her 45 seconds to empty a bowl... and I thought she was eating slowly!

Poko would eat anything. She ate a bar of soap---on two occasions! It wasn't enough to do it the first time. The memory didn't stay with her nearly as long as it stayed with me. Soap is not readily digestible, and the clean-up is, well, let's just say I guarded the soap bars closely after that! She ate charcoal, cardboard boxes of Girl Scout cookies, and hard boiled eggs in the shell. After she dug up poisonous plants in the yard with nary a hiccup, I stopped worrying about visits to the vet.

Another dog we had was much more mannerly in her eating habits. She ate her dinner at a more normal pace. She preferred fruits and vegetables and would steal tomatoes and bananas off the counter. She could peel a tangerine, eat the sections and leave the peel in one piece. She was well-behaved in her eating habits, and we could balance food on her nose that she would catch it as it fell.

Enter Maggie. While Maggie is nearly perfect in every way, she is an absolutely picky eater. Unlike Poko she is a cautious, quiet eater who nibbles each kernel. She will sniff any food item and investigate it before adding it to her diet. There are days when she doesn't eat at all. Until recently if any of her food fell on the floor it stayed there---for days. She only ate food that was in the bowl. When the vet, the lady at the bank or the guy at Petsmart offers her a cookie, she politely sniffs it, takes it in her mouth, drops it on the floor, sniffs it some more, and sometimes walks away.

This brings me to the current situation. Maggie has a new vitamin called a "People Vitamin" that I add to her dinner. They are shaped like a little mailman or a dogcatcher, etc. Maggie has not yet accepted the new treat. When she finishes her meal, there it is. A little mailman sits in the bottom of her bowl.

The vet worries a little. He's given me pills to give her on days she doesn't eat her meal. I don't worry about her at all. She just has her own way. I guess there's a little "Goofy" in all of us. For this normally sedate dog, the mailman waiting in the bottom of her bowl is Maggie's way of reminding me she's NOT a garbage can dog.

Happy Birthday, Maggie!

Maggie, my buddy and traveling companion, turns 10 today. In honor of this special day we decided to have a special birthday dinner for her. Fortunately, for us, that also means we have a treat for us.

Maggie's favorite food is PIZZA!

Our first Lab was the traditional Garbage Can. She ate anything, including stuff she shouldn't. She ended up at the vet's on a few occasions until we decided her stomach had something in common with a goat. Soap, charcoal, hardboiled eggs in the shell, boxes of Girl Scout cookies, including the cellophane, whole chocolate easter bunnies, poisonous plants.... nothing seemed to inflict permanent damage.

Our second Lab had a more refined appetite. Food was not snatched out of your hand, it was delicately lifted. If you were eating a brownie, cookie, apple,...and you happened to let your hand hang at your side between bites, she would come up from behind and gently wrap her tongue around it and pull it from your hand before you realized what was happening. Feeding her pills was a breeze. "Caia, Sit. Caia Catch". The pill was caught and swallowed. But her real love was fruit and vegetables. She could peel a tangerine and eat all the sections and leave the skin intact. She stole tomatoes or bananas off the counter, leaving only a red stain or a banana peel. As soon as anyone began to make a salad, she was by their side, waiting for a treat.

Maggie has her own eating idiosyncrasies. For one thing, she is a picky Lab. She sniffs her food before eating, and from time to time decides she's really not hungry. She does not take pills... ever! She will hold it in her throat until you think it's gone, and then give it back. If she needs antibiotics, the vet knows she has to have a shot. She also is allergic to beef. Go figure! But one food that never fails is Pizza.

For years we had pizza night. As soon as she saw us write the check for the delivery guy she'd stand guard at the door. Casually say the word "pizza" in conversation with someone and her ears perk up and she starts the dance. Sometimes I make my own from a bread dough recipe. As soon as I pull out the pizza pan instead of the loaf pan, she begins to hover. This does not happen if I get the pizza pan out to make something else. Dogs have a sixth sense, and this one can sense when pizza is in the air. One day I pulled a foil wrapped package out of the refrigerator--leftover cold pizza. She awoke from her nap and was under my chair as I ate it.

Maggie only gets the crust. In spite of her great love of Pizza, she's never had a whole slice to herself. In honor of her 10th birthday, we've decided to break tradition and let her eat what, until now, she has only smelled.





Happy Birthday, Maggie! This one's for you!






(By the time she was finished her treat and we were finished with dinner, her bandana was soaking wet from drool and we had brought her a towel to cover the floor. But she was happy!)