A Mourning Dove in my back yard.

 

Have you ever seen a fat bird?  No, probably not.  But fat cats and dogs are, unfortunately, not an uncommon sight.   I have to admit that my dogs are not on the thin side.  I try to cut back on their regular meals but then the treats are slipped in here and there and now the veterinarian is giving me the evil eye.  “He had lost weight,” he says,  “What happened?”  Well…

One reason is that we tend to equate feeding with love.  “Good doggy,” I say and offer up a tasty morsel.  Of course, if they are in the car with me, I have to reward them for being so well-behaved.   (There’s a bag of treats in the glove compartment.) And I always keep a pocket full of treats in case I need to call them back to me in a hurry.  I snap the clicker a couple of times, and they come running for their treat.  Such good dogs.   Then if I want to put them in their “special room” while we eat or sit with our human visitors, they need a treat for enticement. And so it goes.

Thank goodness they like to run after the ball or I just don’t know what they would look like.