Published Tuesday, February 26, 2008 9:32 AM
Updated Tuesday, February 26, 2008 9:33 AM

 

Watts Line 2/27/08

Veggie-wiener doesn’t ask: Where’s the beef


We have these two dogs. Wiener dogs. Dachshunds. They actually own us.

We are their pets. We fight it pretty hard, but as it turns out Sally and Charlotte are way cuter than we are, and so we let them rule our lives. Our payment for letting them do this to us is their sheer entertainment value.

For instance, the latest discussion is over Charlotte, she of the long, red doggy-hair, and her apparent trend towards becoming a vegetarian. I can honestly say that I don’t know of any other vegetarian dogs, but I do believe we have one in the making.

We discovered her veggie-loving ways a couple of months ago when the Hubster was working on a salad and tossed the heel of a piece of romaine to her. (Just for the record, my guy teases the dogs with food-stuff not normally favored by the canine group.

He gets a kick out of offering the dogs items that he hopes will make them recoil and run away because he thinks it’s funny. Things like pickles and lemons always get a great reaction as soon as they give a sniff -- as you can imagine. I think it all started back when we had our first dog and lived in Germany. MacDuff was a lab-setter mix. A big dog that acted a lot like a very young Jerry Lewis – smart and a little ditzy. One day while we were at the market, a man cooking bratwursts on a grill, dropped one of the sausages by accident. MacDuff wanted it in a big way, straining at his leash to get it. The man picked it up with his long fork and tossed it to MacDuff, who took the brat and ate it whole, It went straight down his gullet. And as soon as it hit bottom, it came right back up again, untouched, not a tooth mark on it. It had been hot and soon as it hit Mac’s stomach, it had bounced right out.. Well, we still laugh when we remember MacDuff and the sausage. After it cooled off, our good dog got his brat and enjoyed it a lot.)

But that got the Hubster to tossing food to our dogs to see what would happen. This particular day he tossed the lettuce to each of them. Sally, a confirmed meat-eater, looked at it sideways and began to back away as if she was watching a snake about to strike.

Charlotte, on the other hand, picked up the end-chunk of cold white lettuce as if to say, “Finally, the salad course.” She chomped down on it, practically swallowed it whole, and came back and begged, standing on her hind legs doing a little dance the likes of which we had not seen before. It was as if we were about to hand her the bone of a t-bone steak. She whined. She pranced.

We gave her more lettuce.

Sally watched from across the room in disgust, aghast that any self-respecting dog would act that way.

Now anytime we start getting dinner ready, and the lettuce comes out of the refrigerator, she goes a little nuts and dances around until she gets her salad.

Last night the Hubster tried to give Sally a slice of banana. As expected, she looked at him like he was crazy and left the room. Charlotte, when offered the same slice of banana, wagged her tail, took the slice, and ate it. So now, it seems, sweet Charlotte is into fruit.

I can see a time when Sally is eating her kibble with a dollop of chicken-flavored canned dog food on top, next to Charlotte and her Caesar salad with a side of ambrosia, topped by a dollop of whipped cream.

Contact Judy Watts at 873-9424 ext 220 or jwatts@journalscene.com