The Bone Parade

Bone

My dog Cinder loves these. We buy them by the dozen. It's the one thing in life she savors.

When I give her a new bone, there's usually a long break-in period. There are all sorts of rules in her head about how, when, and where a bone can be consumed. It's a constant puzzle for me and Wendy. She only eats them in the living room, and usually both Wendy and I have to be present for some reason. If we left her alone in her kennel with a bone, she would never touch it.

Lately, she's been doing something we call the Bone Parade. She cradles the bone in her mouth and paces through our house. She will often do this for a half-hour straight, just going in a circuit, making the rounds. If she catches our eye during this Bone Parade, she'll nod her head up, as if to say, "Hey. What's up? I've got a bone."

There's also the Careful Laying Down of the Bone, and the Hiding of the Bone (she will stash it from us under the dining room table where she thinks we can't see it). Then there's the Loving of the Bone, when she decides it's finally time to consume it. We call it "Loving" because she grips the bone between her paws and licks it to soften it up. The she way licks it, though, with eyes half-closed and her tongue slowly slathering the end, is quite obscene.

Once a bone is ready for chewing, it never lasts long. I've seen her polish off a whole bone in about thirty minutes.