The Games We Play

Chillin' on Two Pillows

Ever since I was a pup, Sister and I would play a game where she would hold a cookie in one of her two clenched fists and I was tasked, when presented with these fists side by side, to pick out which one had the cookie using only my keen nose and my canine intuition.  Comparing the choices, of course, involved a lot of slobber transfer from my drooly jowls to Sister’s hands, but once I made up my mind, I would tap the hand of my choosing with my snout repeatedly (or, in my younger days, slash the attached arm repeatedly with my nails).  Sister would always try to trick me—she’d give me the option of switching hands one last time (Monty Hall’s got nothing on Sister)—but I always stood firm with my decision and most of the time ended up being correct.  “You’d be a great bomb sniffing dog,” Sister once told me, “if only bombs were made of cookies.” 

But that’s an old game, a game that Sister and I have played for years and years.  Recently, I’ve come up with a new game.  A game I play with Pa.

Each morning, after breakfast and my first perimeter search of the day, Pa gives me a beef flavored vitamin pill which I’ve happily scoffed down every day for years and years.  Well lately, I’ve been occasionally snubbing my vitamin, but not with any regularity.  I’ll accept the vitamin on Monday, but snub it on Tuesday and Wednesday.  And on Thursday, I’ll take it again, but spit it out on Friday (after breaking it into dust with my teeth) and so on.  There’s no rhyme or reason to my snubbing (at least my family hasn’t figured it out and I’m not telling), but I find the thrill of keeping my humans guessing is quite invigorating and the peanut butter used to persuade me to eat my vitamin on snub days is pretty nice too.