It didn’t take long before we forgot. Over the course of one summer we forgot a cardinal kitchen rule: don’t leave food near the edge of the counter.
It a dog thing. Years of Labrador retrievers hammered that statute home. The most retold story was from the Gabriel archives when we lived in Baltimore, almost forty years ago. My wife decided to make homemade noodles from an old family recipe. She mixed them up, rolled them out, sliced them up, and laid them out on towels to dry. We had to go out that night and upon our return, the noodles were missing. They were gone. Every single one of them. Yes, Gabe helped himself and like a lot of delicious foods, once you start, you just can’t stop.
Lesson learned. From that point on we pushed any kind of food to the back of the kitchen counter or placed it on a higher shelf, out of reach. Our most recent large dog, Samson, wasn’t really a counter surfer, but we still didn’t leave anything in reach.
With a smaller dog at home now – my readers will know him as Winston the West Highlands White Terrier – it’s not an issue. At less that one foot high, he’s no threat to food on the counter. However, one of his best friends, my daughter’s one-year-old Golden Retriever Rex is.
I had several pans of meatballs ready to go into the oven. I walked over to the refrigerator to grab something, and by the time I turned back, Rex had eaten one row of uncooked meatballs. If I had not caught him, it would have been a pizza delivery night.
Then, just the other night, my wife baked a loaf of cranberry bread. After it had cooled on the counter she sliced it in two to freeze half and eat the other. Winston and Rex were outside chasing each other around the yard and the family sat around the fire pit getting ready to roast marshmallows for s’mores. My two grandsons ran in and out of the house as they usually do, one time letting the dogs inside. When my wife went inside to get a drink, she discovered half of a half a loaf was missing. Teeth marks betrayed the culprit, Rex. With that goofy dog smile on his face, I’m sure he thought, “If you didn’t want me to try it, you shouldn’t have left it on the counter.”
Yes, we should have known better. In fact, there’s no guarantee a short dog won’t find his way up on the table. Winston has gotten up on the dining room table when a bench wasn’t pushed in all the way. Sharp eyes caught him before he got any food.
And then there is the legend of Sable our basset hound from a decade or so ago. With a vertical leap of about 2 inches, we never thought she would be a threat to a kitchen counter. However, we did pull into the driveway one day, and saw her up on the kitchen table looking out the window. Somehow she got up on a chair and from there up onto the table. No food was consumed and from that perch, she was able to effectively watch the house while we were gone.
We’ve learned to be safe rather than sorry. Keep all food out of reach.
Waite for it... 