Diary of a Dog-Sitter — Day Five

Food, glorious food

Four o’clock is the new five o’clock. How do I know? Betsy told me. Actually, she’s told me every day since I’ve been dog-sitting. Her owners were adamant: Betsy has her dinner at five o’clock. Betsy has other ideas.

They usually start about 4 pm. She comes up and nudges me. If I ignore her, she slips under the desk, where I’ve set up my laptop, and rests her head on my leg. If that get no response, she begins moaning. Long, slow moans. Apparently, they don’t emanate from her mouth, but from her stomach.

If I manage to ignore those (and it is hard), she then ups the ante. She comes out from under the desk and sits right beside me, moaning and shuffling from side to side on her bottom. Welsh Springer Spaniels are not patient creatures.

If that doesn’t work, she begins the fluttering of her eyelashes.

The earliest I’ve given in, so far, is 4.45 pm. Yesterday, I was about a start a Zoom meeting with a client. It was only going to be ten minutes, but I thought it prudent to meet her demands rather than inflict the hunger-cries of a dog clearly wasting away on my client. And sometimes in this human/dog relationship I think the dog needs to think she’s won, from time to time.

Breakfast, however, is straightforward. Up and out at 7 am, for the first walk of the day, and therefore it goes without saying that the first meal of the day is when we get back. Immediately, we get back. The look of horror on her face when I deign to stop and take my wellington boots off, instead of marching straight into the kitchen to get her breakfast, is worthy of an Oscar.

When it comes to my food, Betsy is rather well-behaved, especially when compared with the dogs I’ve had in the past. (Mind you, I’ve always had golden retrievers, and they are food motivated in everything they do.)

When it comes to my meal times (oh, how you know they begrudge you the fact that we have THREE meals a day, and they have two — despite the fact they have twice as many legs and walk six times the distance we walk), Betsy pretends to be asleep.

She lies under the dining table, eyes shut. Tight shut. I’m not stupid. I know her nose is doing most of the work at this point.

However, Betsy’s owners advised me that while she won’t pester for my food, scraps are expected.

Suffice to say, I cook extra, to ensure there are scraps available.

As soon as I place my knife and fork down on the plate, Betsy bolts to the kitchen, eyes fixed on her empty bowl, nose, three inches away from it, leaving barely enough room to slip a plate in between and scrape any scraps into it.

And last night, I only had to think about placing my cutlery down on the plate, and she’d shot into the kitchen.

Mind you, if I’m honest, I’m quite chuffed she’s that desperate for the extras. For a simpler life, I’d bought with me some preprepared meals (oh, the joys of batch cooking) which means my chicken, ox cheek, beef, and lamb casseroles have come with plenty of gravy. Gravy that obviously tastes delicious, because every drop has to be consumed, no matter how many decibels the metal dog bowl makes as it gets scraped along the flagstone kitchen floor, for the next hour.

Of course, perhaps it’s rather ironic that I enjoy giving Betsy these scraps she enjoys so much. Normally, I would eat my evening meal at six o’clock, but because she likes the scraps so much, I’m having my dinner half an hour earlier.

Apparently, five thirty is the new six o’clock.

Read Day Six’s Post here:

https://readmedium.com/diary-of-a-dog-sitter-day-six-cc932442a3bc

Read yesterday’s posting here: