As you may recall, Saturday was my dog Samson’s 14th birthday. I decided to celebrate with a little gift-giving. Before work on that day, my brother and I popped into a pet store that hawks healthy, organic, and natural pet foods, toys, and accessories. After much superficial perusing, I decided on a seven-inch bone that would improve his oral hygiene as well as his breath. Vanilla mint.
Though I instructed my brother to bring it home as I went to work for eight hours, everyone waited until I returned to open up the present. Holding it out to Sam, who has never before received a treat in the shape of a bone, I’m pretty certain, he took one whiff of it and looked away. “Take it,” I commanded, and he did—but only after much more goading. He immediately put it down on the floor and looked up at me. We went through this sketch one more time before my dad had the brilliant idea to lead Samson to his bed in the living room, where he dropped the treat, thereby signaling “this one’s for you.” Samson followed and soon took to it like a duck to water. He gnawed and bit and licked for at least an hour, about nine minutes of which I recorded on video. All the while, Dad and I wondered how long it would take for him to finish the bone. He’d hardly made a dent the last time I saw it.
Later that night, I found it wedged between his bed and the wall, covered in his hair. I stripped it of its unnecessary fur and replaced it in its original packaging. Dad said he didn’t want Samson to chew on it through the night. Stunned that I would do such a thing, Sam followed me into the kitchen, where we keep his food and treats, begging me with his puppy dog eyes to return it to him. From that point on, he gave me the cold shoulder. Literally. I’m serious! He turned away from me whenever I spoke to him. The next morning, Dad gave him back the bone. And that’s precisely the last time I glimpsed it. Since yesterday morning, Dad and I have been wondering where it is, absolutely incredulous that he could have polished it off since then. One theory we have is that he’s taken to hiding it from us. This mystery is either destined to remain unsolved, perhaps best remembered as a future a cold case (soon we’ll be asking ourselves who abducted that young dog bone and where did he stash it?), or labeled a murder in the first degree. Samson was, after all, killing it.
The Rumination Refinery 