When Beagles Attack…Their Food-Toting Owners
Every time we cook at home, our beagle, Coltrane, lurks nearby, hoping something—a scrap of bacon, a shard of shallot—will fall to the linoleum, one of the many surfaces in the house that has learned to submit to the tender ministrations of his tongue. If we could figure out a way to soap the beagle's mouth before he enters the kitchen, we would have the cleanest kitchen floor in five states.
Every time we return home from one of D.C.'s eateries, he's there on the couch as we open the door, blinking sleepily and wagging gently, a wag that increases in speed as he inspects us for leftovers. Sometimes we like to play a game in which we slip a morsel from a restaurant plate into a napkin, and then into the depths of my handbag. When we arrive home, we watch as the beagle first greets us, then realizes via a quick sniff that There is a Food Product Here and then goes insane nosing at the zipper of the purse and cursing the gods for not giving him opposable thumbs.
Every night when we're about to go to sleep, the beagle leaps on top of Tim and performs a thorough examination of his mustache and beard, hoping against hope that some drop of goodness from his daily rounds will have failed to make it down Tim's throat and will instead be clinging there, ready for canine consumption.
That doesn't happen often, but even the mustache-ghosts of tandoori chicken or tere segas, scents too faint for our pitiful human schnozzles to perceive, fascinate our dog. As a beagle, he is a notorious scent hound, prone to fits of selective deafness when, on walks, he smells a tasty treat such as a deer turd or a week-old burrito ground into the pavement. No cries of "Stop it!" or "Don't eat that dead squirrel/snake/rat/human baby!" will deter him.
In the time we have known him, he has eaten a chicken carcass, a box of Godiva truffles, a half-bottle of Advil, and countless other things that were carefully stored—stacked high on shelves, boarded up behind pantry doors, secured into huge rubber trash cans—but could not survive the stubborn will of a patient (and increasingly chubby) beagle. He has dined on leftovers of waygu beef and had Coho salmon dropped to him as we cooked. He is strangely fond of carrots.
In his most splendid culinary adventure, as we were preparing a multi-course dinner party and our guests were canoodling on the couch, I passed by the door of the dining room on my way to check a recipe, only to let out a screech when I saw that Coltrane had climbed onto a chair, then onto the dining room table, and was delicately making his way across its surface, weaving between the candles, inspecting the plates, and inserting his snout into the glasses of wine we'd left there.
He's getting older now, and we often have to carry him up and down the basement stairs to keep him from slipping. He sometimes misses the bed when he tries to jump up for the nightly ‘stache inspection. Neither of us want to think about the day when our canine gourmand isn't around to thieve, beg, and show passionate enthusiasm over even the lousiest dishes we cook. In that last quality, he is the best (and most unusual) of foodies: content with whatever is given to him.
While we feel like the lucky ones in our relationship with this dog, generally speaking, the pets of foodies and chefs must be extremely happy animals. Do your pets appreciate your work in the kitchen? Do you know of any local chefs with suspiciously pudgy pooches?
4:21 pm
Coltrane!
10:36 am
Yes, it is I, the Ur-Beagle. Hello, Mr. Cisneros. Do you have meats for me?
11:07 am
dog-owners are lucky to be appreciated like that, my kitties can access more food items than a pudgy beagle can (the top of the fridge is the most recent favorite place to explore) but they never appreciate what they find... food is good to bat around for a while but not to consume. the only human-food item i have actually seen cutie p eat is cornflakes. he even refuses chicken and beef, just knocks it to the ground then looks at me for more. i might cook more often if i had a more appreciative crowd.
10:06 pm
Carrie,
I love reading Coltrane stories. I obsessed over James Herriot stories when I was a kid, and you and Tim write about your beagle with a similar mix of tenderness and wit.
More Coltrane! Take him to some restaurants or something and let him walk around on tables! More pictures of fat ole' beagles!
9:39 am
Sounds a lot like our rat terrier, Milo. He cleaned up a little spill on the floor yesterday morning when I was making a breakfast casserole. Awfully handy!
He also ate a bag full of almonds that were in a Velcro'd flap on my laptop bag. He has consumed copious amounts of chocolate and once at an entire loaf of friendship bread and even cleaned up the mess on the floor. There was absolutely no evidence of the bread ever existing in the house by the time we got home.
Our vet loves us and should really give us a preferred customer discount.
9:58 am
Hey Riggs;
We did take Coltrane to Cafe du Parc once. You can read about it here:
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=2477
11:09 am
hey Mike -- thanks for your sweet comment. Tim and I are a little codependent about Coltrane, who seems to be getting older and grayer by the day. I'm afraid we'll be completely incapacitated when he dies.
thumbs-up on Herriot. Great storyteller. So many amazing animal encounters, but the one bit I remember most is a part where he comes home (after being up at 4 a.m. to deliver a cow baby in the freezing cold or something) and his wife, rather than recoiling from his frigid cold body, actual pulls closer to him to warm him up. I've always thought that was one of the sweetest images of real love I've ever read.
sorry for the sentiment, but hey, when you get Herriot into the mix, it's unavoidable!
11:23 am
Tim--Coltrane under the table was awesome. I'm a little disappointed that he didn't make trouble, but that's a good dog for you.
Carrie--Only a madwoman or a woman madly in love would embrace a man covered in cow placenta. My favorite story is about the pig with the hematoma on its ear. I don't remember which book it was in, but it's a pretty gnarly story.