Dogs are sweet, generally. Mine is a 12-year-old oversized sheltie, weighing in at about 50 pounds, and he’s the biggest most loving sweetheart in the world. He’s gorgeous and looks like a small collie…with lassie-like coloring…and he’s been through obedience, flyball and agility training. He just loves to do stuff.

And we love him to pieces…although it appears now as though he’s been bored.

Because he’s a dog..and it’s winter, and he has arthritis now… and he lives in dogworld, which means…he’s a food thief. Dogs in packs steal food from each other; it’s what they do. And they seem to be interested in food that belongs to others simply because it’s THERE…not because they’re hungry.

Yesterday I brought home numerous fixings in order to put together a St. Patrick’s Day feast of corned beef, new potatoes, carrots, etc.–along with the customary Irish Sodabread. I even downloaded a simple recipe for it, in the event I felt unusually motivated…but bought a loaf of sodabread in the event that I didn’t get to it.

And I put it on the kitchen counter, thinking it would be safe there.

In the past, Kirby has pilfered crackers from the countertop….but he hasn’t grabbed anything from there for quite some time, so I thought the sodabread was safe.

NOT.

He woke us up in the middle of the night, panting in distress, banging at our door, because his waterbowl was empty. My husband couldn’t figure out why the dog was so thirsty.

And then he found a wrapper on the floor…and I looked on the counter where the sodabread was…and it was GONE.

The little canine thief had eaten the whole loaf.

There was an old story in the family about a dog that had eaten bread that was rising…and the dog was in immense distress because the bread finished rising in its stomach before going through his system.

At least Kirby didn’t have to go through THAT…because this was already cooked.

Yet I still wonder what the fascination is in dogworld for BREAD. Particularly bread with raisins in it.

Anyone?