I turned the key in the lock, entering a pristine hallway filled with two cats ripe with a sense of urgency.
No purring: just dirty looks. They strode around silently demanding their breakfast and the opening of the cat flap.
I obliged.
The note from my neighbour sat on the working surface.
“Dear Kate,” it said, “Thank you for looking after the cats while we are away. Â Oh, and we thought your dog might like the lamb bone in the bottom of the fridge.”
I opened the fridge: and there it was. If Macaulay our disreputable terrier had been present, I swear that angels would have been singing. A lamb bone. Complete with real lamb.
I took the bone, made everything secure and pottered back home. Macaulay! I hollered. Silence: it takes the dog a while to process any information, no matter how inviting or pregnant with possibility. After a doggy age, he appeared at the top of the stairs. He waited, a faint aura of enquiry hanging somewhere between his over-shaggy ears. No need to come all the way down until my demands had been assessed for urgency and attractiveness.
I waved the bone. “Look! A bone!” I enthused, as if I were trying to interest a teenager in coming to the theatre to see a bit of Ibsen. “It’s tasty!”
Can smells travel upstairs? The lamb-bone’s essence was not travelling rapidly, if the dog’s stolid face was anything to go by. I waggled it again, distributing smelly particles, gung-ho, about the hallway.
But the particles stayed with me.
I do still hold enough clout, however, to get a dog down a set of stairs, and I persuaded him to flollop grumpily down to accommodate whatever weird and whacky scheme I might be cooking up on the ground floor.
And then he smelt it.
A lamb bone. The Holy Grail of the dog kingdom. Something dead, decaying, and exclusively the dog’s.
And now the decision: to gnaw or to inter?
This is always a thorny one for the dog. For years I have been buying expensive filled marrowbones, only to find them borne off to the garden, buried, and nicked the subsequent night by the neighbourhood fox.
The fox exists just to bait Macaulay. He will prowl around the other side of the garden fence intimating:”This fence is mine, not yours.” And that’s sacrilege to Macaulay. The first law of the Terrier Kingdom is: This Fence Is Mine and I’ll Bark Fit ToWake The Dead If You Try And Pass.
Of course, it’s not just one-sided. Mac steals the fox’s buried bones in the forest the other side of the fence, and brings them home to bury in our pristine leather sofas. So it stands to reason that anything the dog buries in the garden constitutes Payback for the fox.
The lamb bone was not just any bone, though.
This was evidenced in the dog’s solemn decision to gnaw for a precious half an hour before consigning the bone to the underworld.
But consign it he did, digging a hole with great energy and solemnity and dropping it in ceremonially.
That was two days ago. Today, he dug it up.
No: the fox is not on his mettle, and had not found it as yet. Mac’s delight at foxing the fox was tempered by the acute anxiety of a creature with treasure: to gnaw? Or to bury safely once more?
As I write this, the dog is acting out the very essence of what it means to be on the horns of a dilemma. He gnaws unhappily and then buries it; digs it up, gnaws, buries.
If it’s sense of smell the fox uses, finding this thing is going to take him all night.
Kate Shrewsday 
Decisions, decisions. Cats don’t usually spend that much time timing about food. It’s there to eat!
Alas, mine are shocking thieves, Kate: but that’s another story 😀
How to outfox the fox! 🙂
A cunning plan indeed.
I have terriers and a lab and they are gnawers. Unfortunately, when they do dig it is more to uncover rather than to inter. Oh poor moles and gophers!
😀 No underworld at your place, Tammy!
Maybe a trail of scents is just what the fox needs to be entertained?
A bone-chase. What fun.
You sound a bit like a serial killer
(reconsidering knowing Kate)
Real chuckles over this on
First the early demands of the residents – it doesn’t matter if you are awake or not – they have their schedules to keep and you must move quickly…
Poor pups do have a problem: tired of chewing, how to keep the bone safe? And Mac in addition has to out fox a fox!
The pressure, Phil! Crushing!
It’s like Montgomery and Rommel, warfare in the desert. The Terrier and the Fox.
I can hear the film music swelling in the background, Gale…
That fox is going to go crazy trying to figure out exactly which spot the bone now rests. Good for Macaulay. I’m glad he’s enjoying his treat.
This morning will be the proof of the pudding, Judy! Will the bone still be where Mac left it? Will Mac even remember where it is??
Mac’s behavioral dilemmas delight. Thanks, Kate.
I just write as I see, Nancy 😀 That dog is four-legged, walking material.
Sometimes wish my dog was more like Mac,
He shows no interest in bones; food is to eat and he likes his chicken breast or some salmon or sardines an occasional egg raw or boiled he’s not fussy. Anything going really!
But he just can’t come at a bone.
I wonder;is he perhaps a snob?
Sounds like a most gourmet diet, Brian! It trumps Mac’s doggie biscuits, for sure!
I am impressed that Mac remembers that he’s buried this bone. That truly is a very special bone to have rated a place of semi-permanence in Mac’s mind. My childhood dog, Mean Streak, was a gnawer, but not a bury-er. Also, once he gnawed off the good bits, he completely lost interest in it. My family’s current dog, Thurber, is not allowed bones, but even if he were, he doesn’t have a yard. He does have a shed-load of balls and plush toys, many that are hidden behind the couch.
I have never understood the urge to chew on dead things and dirt………but I’m not a dog. It cracks me up that they are so predictable in their reactions. I hope Mac outfoxes the fox with this bone to the very end.
Bliss. A new year for Mac and the Fox. Ha!
Hilarious!
Amazing that he remembers where he buried it. Terriers are tenacious. 🙂
Reggie can’t be bothered with all that. He would gnaw it to smithereens in a hot NYC minute.
Your dog has all the character a dog should have, and you manage to convey it.
Our dogs have yet to bury a bone, but then again, we don’t have a fox for them to worry about 🙂
Gorgeous post Kate! Reminds me how much I love dogs and cats 🙂 It’s amazing how distinct their personalities are. Our Golden Retriever Storm is a big time digger and burier – food full stop is his Holy Grail – but our German Shepherd Quest is far more interested in going anywhere in the car, while food pales into insignificance for him 🙂
Why don’t they have a ‘love’ star? This post rates one.
When my parents ran a pub our labrador stole a whole ham from the kitchen and buried it in the garden, then seemed to guilt stricken to eat it. Lose-lose all round. Our dachshund was immensely possessive of bones and would gnaw on them for ever. The garden was supposed to be where the dogs had their bones She distained merely burying them however, and brought them indoors, struggling up steps designed for longer legs and selecting the favoured hearth rug for their deposition.
A well-gnawed bone if there ever was one, Kate, and a well told story as well.
I wonder if a dog thinks about his buried treasures when they are planted underground. Does he spend idle time mulling over the delight of it safely waiting for the next bout with hunger or an opportunity to remind the other creatures of the forest that it is his? What calls him back? I watch the squirrels bury acorns in our yard for the “bleak winter”–of 75 degrees and nothing is every buried under snow! Yet they bury and prepare, and will go find them later, even when other food is available. I am amused with Mac’s instinct to bury his treasure, and delighted to know he didn’t have to lose out to the Mr. Fox.
Such a delicious story, love it! 🙂
Did Macaulay declaim, ‘Alas poor Yoric, I gnawed him, Horatio!’ after disinterring his prose … er, prize?
This is SO typical of mutthood!