A Dog's Life

One thing I'm fairly confident of, but my dog isn't, is that he will never know the pleasure of eating a Vienna Sausage.

He knows, through means a mystery to me, the sound of one of those little cans opening, and I can't fathom how that sounds different than anything else. It can't be experience, either, since I only have Vienna Sausages once or twice a year, but somehow he knows.

Knows and reacts. Knows and wants.

He goes nuts over those tiny canned weiners, and I can't imagine why. He's never had one, not that I know of, and I don't think they're any better for him than they are for me. In fact, I'd completely forgotten about them until last week when I was hungry and needed something soft to fill the hole in my stomach.

Vienna Sausages, it must be said, are very soft.

At any rate, he freaked when I opened the can. Until the last one was done, a period of about fifteen minutes from can to pan to stomach, he was never less than a foot from me and was devoting his entire existence to me and my snack. I've never felt so self-conscious in my life. It was unnerving.

I tried giving him some dog treats as an appeasment, but he'd already had dog cookies in his life and somehow knew they weren't as tasty as a tiny hot dog, which he's also never eaten.

I didn't lord my little snack over him, but he acted as if I had.