Odie and the Oh-Duh! Moment

We got Odie from the dog pound. He's German Sheppard, or mostly Sheppard. We named him Odie, after the cartoon Garfield's sidekick. If it's any kind of ball--tennis ball, snow ball, basketball--you get the idea, he has to chase it. He will also go though anything that stands in his way of getting the ball. He's not too bright but he's a lot of fun. One of our kids explains this as, "Not only does his elevator not go to the top floor, there are days when that elevator doesn't get out of the basement."

15 lbs. beef brisket, 107 lbs. walking stomach

As an example, consider the brisket story. Sometimes when our little grocery store in our little town 30 miles away, doesn't have much in the way of selection, I'll buy a whole brisket for $2 a pound, cook up the whole thing and use if for a variety of meals.

One night, after slow roasting the brisket for 4 hours, I proceeded to shred the meat. I was about half-way through the brisket when Mother Nature called.

Animals are not allowed in my kitchen. Ever. We train them from the first day that the kitchen is not their space. We have a little motion detector birdie that acts as the "squealer" until they learn.

So no problem if I happen to need to go upstairs to use the facility, since there isn't one downstairs. I proceeded to do so on this particular day, without any thought of leaving a large dog within sight of a beef brisket unsupervised. Which this particular one weighed in around 15 pounds. The brisket, that is. The dog weighs in at about 107 pounds.

Oh-Duh!

I came back down to finish shredding the brisket. All the meat I had shredded was...GONE! After looking around for the culprit, I see Odie curled up on the cat's sleeping pad, or rather trying to curl up on the cat's sleeping pad. He couldn't quite get curled up because his stomach looked like he was ready to birth an elephant. And he is trying his hardest to act nonchalant, as if nothing has happened, nothing is out of the ordinary. He had the same innocent look on his face like in the picture above.

"Odie..."

Odie's eyebrows twitch up and down. He puts on his most innocent look.

"Who me?"

Odie spends the next two days outside more than in. We could have had a methane explosion if he was around, not to mention the desperate dashes outside. He also didn't want anything to eat for the next two days. His innards were working overtime, and didn't need any additional abuse, I think.

Anymore, if I'm in the middle of something involving food, and I can't see the kitchen directly, I pop whatever it is in the oven and close the door. Just in case.

Copyright 2011 by Katherine Palochak