It's a Dog Eat Everything World

Dogs are the culinary cowboys and cowgirls of the animal kingdom. They eat first, ask questions later.

I am a dog walker, and during almost every walk, my charge and I will pass several items that fall along the spectrum of food to trash: discarded napkin, candy wrapper, pizza crust, mud-caked paper, and so on.

One would think that I would just have to keep Sophie, a golden retriever I walk, away from the pizza crust and maybe from the candy wrapper if there is still traces of chocolate smeared on it. Just to be safe, since chocolate makes dogs sick.

Ha ha ha ha ha!

In the world of dogs, there is no trash. There is only food, food?, and "probably not food, but why take a chance?"

When I pass a balled-up napkin, Sophie will try to eat it. Sure, it could be a napkin. Or...it could be a napkin dipped in barbeque sauce! Or a napkin someone dropped after robbing the gravy store and fleeing the police. Or a delicious dog biscuit cleverly disguised in napkin form, a reward for any dog brave enough to challenge the orthodoxy of molecular structure and one's lying eyes.

A bloodhound can identify your scales of skin that you shed three days ago. Dogs have 40 times the number of scent receptors in their noses than humans. So does Sophie sniff the napkin for 1.5 seconds before deciding whether to eat it?

Of course not. Maybe that's what dogs used to do, but today's modern dogs don't have the time. I've seen Sophie scoop up a wad of paper, scan for grease and chocolate, and spit it out while my tongue is still lifting upwards to make an "S".

Sophie and I have a different reaction when she pulls off a successful eating. I feel guilty and frustrated, having failed to stop her from eating something that will either give her diarrhea or an upset stomach. She feels like she just pulled off the most amazing feat, like the con in The Sting or a bank shot off three walls.

I used to lunge to pull the offending substance from her mouth until I realized she was interpreting that as a lesson in the stupidity of chewing. Our current agreement is that if my attention slips and she eats something yucky, I won't flip out, unless it's extremely disgusting. A piece of bread with jelly on it: okay. If the jelly has ants on it, I'm doing what I can to swat it from her mouth.

She gets enough protein as it is from the ants on the pizza crusts.