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What to blog about .....

  • By Jessica Holt
  • 15 Nov, 2015

I’m still deciding what this blog should be. Should it be filled with lighthearted musings? Should it be filled with my opinions on current events? Should it be filled with serious subjects that might actually be of some benefit to someone someday? Should it be a combination of all three? I don’t know yet. So today, it’s going to be about my dog. Because you can’t go wrong writing about a dog.

This week’s topic will be food, because in my dog's world, you can’t go wrong talking about food.


This was Mutt about five years ago. This picture was taken about a week after my next door neighbor showed up on my doorstep with him and a 45 lb. bag of Kibbles ’n Bits and told me he was moving soon and thought Mutt should stay with me. This was also about three days after Mutt was diagnosed with a terrible case of mange that required weekly vet visits for two months. Funny how those two events coincided, huh? This was before the wearing of a sweater afflicted him with sudden, debilitating paralysis. And this was before Mutt realized there was a world of culinary adventure beyond his lifetime supply of Kibbles ’n Bits. A series of questionable stomach aches sent the barely touched bag of kibble to the grateful dog down the street, and Mutt found himself eating all-natural dog food filled with an array of fruits and vegetables that make my own diet pale in comparison.

This is Mutt today. He’s developed quite the sophisticated palate when it comes to dog food, but people food is a different story. The same tongue that enjoyed the hard-boiled quail egg and calamari from the can of wet food will spend five minutes licking what used to be a boiled peanut in the street.  If there’s even a crumb on the ground within a one mile radius, he knows exactly where it is and the quickest way to get there. I tend to forget about the Froot Loop trail leading from the mini van to the apartment door a quarter of a mile away. I don’t think about the french fries strewn about beside the pickup truck half a mile in the other direction. My mind is rarely fixated on the distant neighbor’s grill that seems to be in use almost every night. It’s not until I’m being pulled down the sidewalk by what feels like an eighty pound dog, but is really just an eighteen pound dog on a mission, that I realize where we’re headed. And even when the Froot Loops have been run over so many times they’ve been reduced to rainbow powder, and the fries have been rained on so many times they’ve turned to mashed potatoes, and the grill droppings have sunk so far into the ground that a shallow hole must be dug to find them, Mutt’s out there, rain or shine, keeping the streets clean of anything that is or ever was edible.

Not only does he have a nose for food, he has an ear for it too. Mutt knows about 150 words, and about 143 of them are related to food. Ask him about breakfast. You’ve got his attention. Ask him about dessert. Ear perks and head tilts galore. Say the word treat or anything that rhymes with it, and he’s trying to wave at you, shake your hand, sit, dance, and give you a high five all at the same time. Just don’t ever say one of those food-related words without following through, because he will stare at you with such unwavering intensity that you’ll find yourself wondering if he has some kind of special mind control over you. And he does, because he wins the stare contest. Every single time.  


Next week’s blog topic:

Yes, I’m the one who named my dog Mutt. Yes, I think it’s a pretty horrible name for a dog. Yes, I tried to change it. More than once. Still do every now and then. It was all a big misunderstanding. How could the naming of your dog be a misunderstanding, you say? I’ll explain next week. Unless I decide what my blog should be before then. But I don’t have high hopes about that.

So to sum up: If you come back here hoping to see more adorable pictures of my dog next week, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. Not yet, anyway. Soon. Maybe. Hopefully. But I’ll still throw a picture in every now and then.  

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