We've created a monster Since Gretch is in obedience class -- graduation is tonight -- Chris has been practicing with her a lot. She has gotten quite chunky in recent weeks on account of all the rewards, so Chris was using dinner as a reward in the evenings: do a trick, get a few morsels of food.

Of course, Maggie and Sebastian are around too, so he's been working with them too. Maggie can really only sit on command, so Gretch will do these elaborate sit-down-roll-shake combos and then we'll have Maggie "sit!" so she feels included.

Well, last week Maggie wouldn't eat her dinner for me one night. The next morning, no breakfast. By afternoon, she still hadn't touched her food and I was worried. She had been chewing on a squeak toy the day berfore -- did she swallow some plastic? I called the vet and made an appointment for the next morning.

When Chris got home, he said maybe she just wanted the attention she gets when we feed it to her a few bits at a time, how he had been feeding them the whole week before. Sure enough, she ate the whole bowl of food when I fed it to her.

Now for about half of her meals, I have to sit down with her and feed her by hand. Today at first she wasn't really interested even then so I made her sit and said good girl and THEN she started to eat out of my hand.

What a funny dog, huh?  ¶ 10:41 AM