The Cheese Is The Thing

Most of my friends who have dogs in their families tell me stories about how their dog is like a vacuum for food dropped on the ground or that no matter what they put in their dog’s food bowl it gets sucked down in a blink of an eye with a follow up begging look that says, “Is that all I am getting?” If I were a dog that is the kind of dog I would be too. Not so discerning about quality and very interested in quantity. Ok, maybe a little interested in quality.

Now our dog is not in that normal dog camp. If most dogs are a live-to-eat Shay Shay is an eat-to-live type dog. Picky is putting mildly how she acts at the majority of food placed in her bowl.

When Shay was a puppy and first moved into her forever home we thought maybe she missed her mother and that is why she refused to eat all of the fifteen kinds of foods we gave her. She would look at a bowl of kibble, barely sniff it and walk away. Not a taste or a nibble. We tried wet, dry, soft, raw, and every combination.

Eventually we found a sensitive stomach blend she would try, but actual eating a whole bowl was rare. Now don’t get me wrong, she is healthy and active, but she definitely has retained her girlish figure.

My attitude is if she gets hungry enough she will chose to eat rather than die. Russ on the other hand hates the thought that his precious baby might be hungry. He has been known to leave the house late in the evening and go to Harris Teeter and buy her a whole cooked chicken that he then will shred with his bare hands and scatter over the sensitive stomach blend. This she likes.

When Russ is out of town I must admit I begin to worry if she goes a day or two without a regular meal. I have discovered that a pinch of Swiss and Gruyere blend shredded cheese sprinkled over her Bill and Jack’s dry food will induce her to eat. It is so much cleaner for me to spoon out a bit of cheese rather than getting chicken fat up under my fingernails and she seems to eat about the same amount and with the same gusto.

It got me thinking that I like everything I eat better with cheese. I bet that if you were to melt that same shredded blend on a piece of cardboard I probably would love it. So maybe what I need to do is to remove cheese from my diet and see if I feel as lack luster about my meals as Shay Shay does. I like Jarlsburg cheese in my scrambled eggs, Blue in my daily arugula salad, goat as a dessert at night. I am sure that cheese makes up the largest percentage of my daily calories. It is the last vice I have not given up, oh yeah and Sweet ‘n low in my iced tea. I will eat chicken everyday for the rest of my life as long as I have cheese. I could forgo ice cream forever as long as Brie is still in my diet.

So can I blame my dog for not wanting to eat, heavens forbid, dog food? I have no idea who first introduced her to cheese, but if it happened before she came to live with us I can understand why she was holding out on eating unless there was cheese, or chicken in a pinch. I guess I have not gotten desperate enough to drop those last five pounds by giving up cheese all together. I somehow feel like my world would turn from Technicolor to sepia if I did.

For now I guess I could use my desire to have my dog stay alive by giving her a bit of cheese on her meal as my excuse to have a big drawer of cheese in my fridge. If only I had someone doling out my portion as just a sprinkle on my veggies.