Mea Culpa

       While working on last night’s posting, I started to have an uncomfortable feeling that maybe I, too, have been passing on questionable eating habits to the next generation.
       Well, it’s not quite the next generation, since I don’t have children. But I do have a wonderful dog, Olympia.
       I don’t treat her like my child exactly. Once I told Tom that if I wasn’t married to him, I would marry Olympia. Recently, I’ve been thinking of her more as a beloved sister.
       I don’t dress her in silly clothes or feed her filet mignon or anything like that -- although I have been known to give her small nibbles of lobster, fois gras or truffle cheese, all of which she loved. Most of the time though, I feed her a super premium dry dog food. And as an inexpensive and plentiful treat, I always carry around bits of Purina Beneful in my pockets. Most of the dogs in the neighborhood love me, because they know I have enough treats for everyone.
       But here’s the thing. At the bottom of every jacket or pants pocket, I always have little green pieces of Beneful left over.
       For those who aren’t dog-food aficionados, Beneful comes in an assortment of colors and shapes. For example, there are red chunky pieces that reportedly are moist and chewy and made with real beef. There are also little golden bone-shaped pieces that apparently signify calcium, brown heart-shaped pieces that signify iron, and so on. And there are little green pea-sized pieces that apparently represent vegetables and important vitamins and nutrients.
       And when I give out treats, not only to Olympia, but to all the neighborhood dogs, I always give out the chunky or bone-shaped or heart-shaped pieces, but never the little peas. I am giving the pieces as treats after all, and without even thinking about it, I suppose I figured that no dog would want a treat reminiscent of vegetables. 

       I mean, imagine a parent considering whether to reward a child with ice cream or broccoli. That’s the choice I was making every single day. And I don’t even know if the pieces actually taste differently, or if the shapes and colors are so designed simply to appeal to a human aesthetic.
       So today, I gathered up a handful of those green pea bits from the bottom of several jacket pockets and offered them to Olympia as we went through our day. And she seemed just as excited to eat them as any other color or shape I had ever given her.
       I had, subconsciously I guess, been trying to protect my furry little sister from something I assumed she wouldn't enjoy either. And let’s face it -- she’s a dog. She chews on twigs and sniffs poop. Was I insane?