Where the wild things are

Brody must be going through a growth spurt. He’s always liked food, but this past week he eyes it with a mania reserved for teenage boys eyeing the paper-wrapped magazines at the convenience store. When he sees me with the bowl, he starts to wag his tail, then his tail starts to wag him, then he starts jumping and spinning and salivating all over the floor. Only when he collapses in a hypoglycemic pile on the floor do I place the bowl next to him, where the food is inhaled in under 10 seconds.

At work today, he pulled a bag of enzymatic rawhide chews off the shelf and starting tucking into them while I was in surgery. At first I thought he had one single rawhide chew that he had been working on all day, but then it started to dawn on me that while every hour or so he had it down to a nub, a few minutes later it would magically regenerate. He had hidden the ripped up bag in the back behind a mop bucket. The only reason I found it was I caught him sneaking into the storage area, and I followed him because I thought he was skulking off to pee.

At lunchtime, I had a hankering for a pita sandwich from the local Greek cafe. I took it back to work, eagerly opened it, and there looking back at me was a pile of stinky gyros, which I most definitely did NOT order. Lamb is gross. So I gave a strip to Brody, threw the rest in the trash, and ate the side salad. 15 minutes later, while I was in an exam room, I hear a crash, then some yelling, and “BRODY!!” Which is never good. I crane my head out the door, and I see the trashcan on its side, its smelly vet-hospital type contents spilling onto the floor, and Brody’s head buried inside. The techs are dragging him out by his back legs. I wave apologetically, then duck back into the room. You’d never know I was actually training the dog. This must be what having teenagers is like.

When I got home, I left Brody in the living room while I went to tuck the kids into bed. I saw him furtively glancing at my empty dinner plate, but there was nothing on it but a solitary rice grain so I figured it would be ok on the table.

Halfway into “Where the Wild Things Are,” as I was talking about the naughty Max and his wild rumpus with the beasties, I hear Anderson Cooper in my living room, talking about healthcare. He is insistent. And loud. Getting louder.

Now Anderson Cooper is yelling, his deafening roar drowning out my bedtime reverie, and I have to interrupt my story to figure out exactly why Anderson is bellowing at 20 decibels.

And there is Brody, oblivious to the pounding his eardrums must be taking, standing on the remote control. His dewclaw has sunk into the volume button, consigning poor Anderson to delivering the news at jet engine levels of loudness. The extra inch of height has pushed him one centimeter closer to that grain of rice, but alas, all he can do is stretch his tongue out in a futile raspberry at the taunting plate.

He’s 40 pounds at 4 months old, so don’t worry people, I’m not starving the guy no matter what he might tell you. That being said, he looked so sad and pathetic that I had no choice but to give his skinny butt a little extra food. Then I went back upstairs to my daughter and told her there was no need to sail in and out of weeks and almost over a year to where the wild things are, because he is right downstairs, licking my plate.