My parents seem to be making a big deal out of my eating two meals each day.

Honestly, I don’t like eating dog food. Dr. M’s technician said that this was very odd for a Labrador Retriever. She said that dogs in general, and Labrador Retrievers in particular, are usually vacuum cleaners around food. I don’t know about this; I do have the papers to prove I’m a Lab. But the truth is that when my parents feed me dog food, I can go a whole day without eating.  Even in the good old days when Phil and I used to take long runs for as long as one hour, I still would come home and not eat.  Phil would go to work in the morning and come home at night, and my food bowl would still be full from breakfast. Sometimes I wasn’t even interested in drinking water.

My mom changed all this.

She rewrote the saying, “You can lead a dog to water but you can’t make him drink” to “You can lead a dog to water and you CAN make him drink.” And then she wrote a saying of her own: “You can lead a dog to his food and you can make him eat.”

My mom and I have a lot of famous stare-down contests. I stare her down so she won’t make me eat, and she stares me down until I eat.  This has intensified lately, as I must take medications that require they be taken after a meal, and as I’m now tired of the chicken broth.

Here is a photo of me staring her down. I want her to think that my eating my breakfast is the worst thing that could possibly happen to me.  Within a minute or two from when this photo was taken, she is staring me down, and I am eating. In fact, I am eating my entire bowl of breakfast. She wins.

Then she says, “Good boy!  Good boy, Joey!” and gives me my medication.

After that, I get a treat!

Here’s our morning routine: Every morning, Phil comes and wakes me up, but we no longer jog. Now we just take a short walk which, to me, is heavenly. As soon as I do my thing, we go back home. We walk slowly. When Jane comes downstairs, she gets me breakfast and makes sure that I eat it. She tries to make my breakfast interesting for me by adding some chicken soup to it. The idea is that in order for me to take my medicine, I have to have eaten first. Sometimes I refuse to eat it.  I stand there, sniff around, look around, look at her, face my food but roll my eyes toward her to see if she’s looking at me, stretch, sniff around again, do anything but eat, and then she says, “Joey, eat your breakfast.” Some people think that dogs don’t speak English, but I understand exactly what she wants from me. She wants me to eat my breakfast.

We have the same routine in the evening, starting with the evening walk with Phil. Either before the walk or after it, Jane feeds me my dinner and tries to make it interesting by pouring some chicken soup into it. If I don’t eat it, she says “Joey, eat. Eat your dinner.” She wants me to eat because I cannot take my medicine on an empty stomach. Some people say that dogs don’t speak English but I understand exactly what she wants from me. She wants me to eat my dinner.