A Classic Cooper Story

(File photo not directly related to this story.)

I should have posted this a month ago, but I've been kind of busy finishing my first ever novel. Better late than never, I always say.

Anyway, while Cooper (and Finley) spent two and a half weeks with us in April, lots of funny little stories occurred. However, no other one is quite as heart-wrenching and yet hilarious as this one. Julie had left a couple of store-bought bones for us to give Cooper, each of which has a hard outside and some sort of chewy treat in the middle. A few days after he arrived, I gave Cooper the first of the bones, and he immediately went to town on it. He would chew it and chew it and really seemed to love the thing! But after a couple of hours, he appeared to tire of it, as he brought the bone over to where I was sitting and gave it to me. I thought, "That's kind of strange," but put it away.

A couple nights later, I thought of the bone again, and got it out for him. He once again started working on it, but this time it was only half an hour or so before he'd had enough, and presented it to me once again.

Repeat the pattern a few more times, and then eventually Julie comes home from Africa. She's over to pick up her babies and have supper with us, and at one point she spies the two bones, one of which hasn't even been unwrapped yet. Picking up the other one, she says, "How come you didn't push the chewy stuff in the centre out for him so he could get at it more easily?" I say, "First of all, you didn't tell me about that, and secondly, how would I know when to do that?" And she says, "Well, usually he'll bring the bone to you so that you can push it out for him...." I could barely bring myself to tell her the rest of the story.

I still get teased about that little comedy of errors now, a month later. I feel like, in that one instance at least, I was probably the worst dog owner ever. The poor guy kept faithfully giving me his bone to fix, and I kept "rewarding" his misplaced trust in me by putting it up out of his reach! It's a wonder he didn't attack me in my sleep one of those nights!