Friday night is Shy Anne’s favorite time of the week. That’s when I clean out the refrigerator. If there are any leftovers that are still edible and are safe for dogs to eat, the Besties get to feast. Moxie and Sundance watch TV or nap until I have finished the cleaning-out process. Shy, the quintessential hunting dog, comes into the kitchen to keep a watchful eye on me while I move items from the frig to the kitchen counter, sorting as I go. She then reports back to the other two Besties every few minutes. “Hey, guys! Grandma is going to let us have that great smelling chicken and rice that she wouldn’t let us taste last Tuesday night! “How do you know?” “She made that “AWWWWWWWW!” sound—you know—when she has made a mistake that she can’t undo!” “Maybe she spilled something and had to clean it up.” “Nope! She was talking to herself, scolding, saying she had done something stupid. Woo Hoo! It’s going to be chicken and rice for us tonight!” Shy returned to the kitchen to resume her surveillance. I gave her a little bite of the leftover chicken breast. “Yep! It’s a done deal, guys. It’s chicken and rice for dinner, and it looks like we’ve having chicken soup a la Pedigree in the morning for breakfast.” The breakfast that Shy was referring to was giblets from a six-pound chicken that I bought on a doorbuster special. I had slow boiled it earlier in the day so there would be plenty of broth. After boning out the meat, I set aside the light meat for my own use. I got the broth, skin, heart, and gizzards, and a little bit of the dark meat ready to go into the food processor. After it has all been mixed together, ground up, and poured over dry Pedigree dog food, this elixir is like breakfast heaven for my canines. Shy reported back to the other two Besties: “I think we’ll each get a bite of canned salmon too. Grandma is asking that computer thing if it’s safe for us to eat it…….oh, good. She’s putting that little Tupperware bowl over onto the counter where she’s getting our other food ready.” When the Besites heard the food processor start up, Sundance’s interest was piqued, and Moxie started checking all the clean dog bowls. She found that dinner was even tastier than she imagined, but her nose told her that the tidbits of canned salmon weren’t in any of the bowls. (Mox sleeps next to me, and I didn’t want to smell fish on her breath all night.) No matter, all three Besties were content to get the treasured meal that they had feared I would keep all for myself…and I would have, had I not put the jug of milk in front of the leftovers I had intended to eat for dinner one night. Shy knew the Besties weren’t going to get all the leftovers at one time. She had kept an accurate inventory of what I had placed in a shallow pan and put back into the frig. I could see her waving her nose around in the air each time I opened the refrigerator door. Besides the bowl of breakfast soup, the pan also included tidbits for their snacks over the weekend—three orphan slices of American cheese, half an apple, one deli slice of sandwich beef, and a couple of boiled eggs that didn’t peel out perfectly, and, of course, the three teaspoons of salmon. Starting today, all these goodies will be divided up and given to the Besties in bite-sized snacks, a few at a time, after each pasture run or when they do something good, like appear immediately when I tell them it’s time to come indoors. Ask my Besties when life is most enjoyable at the KDH Stock Farm, and they’ll tell you it’s “Friday Night Bites!” If they’re lucky, the Besties will also get a few snacks to enjoy like the candy we humans used to buy called “Now and Later.”
Posted on: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 15:36:53 +0000
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