I once found a great toy just lying on the kitchen floor.  I mean, it was a real winner.  It was chewy, had wonderful flavor, was black, and from time to time would come apart in pieces that I could swallow.  Not only that, there was a hard part on it that helped clean my teeth.  I had a great time until my caretaker came back from work that night and discovered what I had done.

“Biscuit!  Bad dog!  That’ll teach me for leaving my leather boots lying on the floor!  What an expensive mistake!”

Sometimes our caretakers are difficult to understand.  Usually, he’ll put something out for me to enjoy just before he goes off to that “work” thing and gives me a good petting and a great meal when he returns.  But, it wasn’t so that day!

There was another time when I was drawn by my keen sense of smell to a box thing on the floor that had been left open.  Being the well-proportioned and wiry dog that I am, I was able to reach the top of the box thing and peer down inside.  Well, what do you know?  Wonder of wonders!  There were all sorts of good people food discarded in the box thing that were beckoning to me.  Isn’t it great that our caretakers have us in mind this way?

Well, may I remind you that I had a wonderful, nutritious and well-rounded meal that memorable day?  (I do seem to remember a loud bang as I brought the box thing to the floor so that I could get more reasonable access to its contents.)  There were vegetables, fruit, bones and all sorts of delightful sensations all wrapped up into one concentrated experience!  Mmmm, mmmmm!  Sigh.  If only every day could be like that day.

Later on, when my caretaker returned home, he noticed that I had taken advantage of the treats he left me and said, “Oh, no, Biscuit!  Well, there’ll be no meal for you tonight!”  What he said turned out to be an understatement!  Within a few hours, from deep within my gut, I began to feel the strangest sensations.  Unusual, bubbling noises, trumpet sounds and hideous smells.  I thought, “The animal that made those smells must have been in a bad way!”  Then, I realized that the animal was me!

I’ll skip the gory details and just say that my caretaker had to spend about a half hour cleaning up the kitchen that night.  I also noticed that he later replaced that box with a new, shiny, round metallic can that had a step that would pop the top and return to the closed position after his foot got off the step.  Hmmm.  I thought that the new can would put an end to such wonderful (?) gastric experiences.  In time, I found out that this intuition would prove true.

There was one more significant incident in my life that I’ve relegated to painful memory.  It seems that I found what appeared to be a bone, except that it didn’t have the usual flavor to it.  Also, it had a heavy, cold thing at one end.  One overly redeeming value to the object, though, was that it was great to chew on.  You see, we dogs have a need to exercise our muscles, clean the calcium and otherwise keep up our reputations as dogs.  To make a long story short, this exhilarating experience was met with the following from my caretaker, “Oh, no!  Not my 20-ounce hammer!  I paid an arm and a leg for that!”  Well, fortunately for me, I didn’t have to pay an arm and a leg for the experience, but I certainly discovered that this was not a good thing to do!

I’ve been told that we dogs and other house pets don’t have enough understanding to avoid such circumstances.  It seems we don’t know the proper application of things in the human world.  So, the humans have to keep doggy-proofing their homes to keep us and their things safe from harm.  (Fortunately, some folks at Doggy World and the Pet Plaza have figured out how to make things for us that are good for us, that we enjoy, and that our caretakers don’t get upset over if we do doggy things to them like chew them up.  Some of them taste rather good, too!)

In contrast, it seems that humans of all kinds understand such things.  They even know things about our anatomies, what we can eat and can’t eat, and the limits of our abilities.  Very unfortunately, there are some humans out there who seem not to have understanding, or maybe they are simply cruel.  (Some of my friends here at the Biscuit Fund can tell you true life stories.)  They have taken some of my friends and thrown them against walls, stepped on them, fed them awful things and even used their bodies to test knives and other sharp objects.  Ugggh!  It just makes me shiver and my teeth chatter!

I know that most of you folks out there are part of the solution and not part of the problem.  It’s the other few that cause society most of the cost involved in taking care of us who hurt.  Our friends at the BC SPCA Biscuit Fund tell me that each year they make about 4,000 house calls to rescue pets like me and my friends.  While there’s a lot of joy when one of us recovers and can begin playing again, quite often some of us simply don’t make it to another day.  We have our share of sorrows and joys.  You can be sure, too, that we never get used to the hard stories.

It’s our friends at the Biscuit Fund that succeed in making more good stories out of bad situations than we would otherwise have in these difficult moments and unfortunate relationships with bad caretakers.  Sometimes the BC SPCA Biscuit Fund folks have to cut off a leg for the pet to survive, but when that happens, the pet is usually much happier after the healing occurs.  Sometimes I even envy my three-legged friends because they end up finding new homes much quicker than my four-legged friends!

Well, it’s time for me to take care of my teeth again.  I have this new Doggy World flavored chew that’s pretty good, if I do say so myself.  But, between you, me and the watering spot lamppost, I much prefer the whole, natural beef or lamb bone.  Somehow, I think my body can tell that it’s better for me, too!

/Signed/  Biscuit