Andy Loved Arby's Roast Beef

As Andy aged, he had a hard time maintaining his weight. I worried because he was losing muscle mass. Accordingly, I took measures to encourage his appetite. If he wanted to ‘sneak’ out to the kitchen and eat the cat food, I’d let him. He knew he shouldn’t do it making it that much cuter.


During the school year, I developed a hankering for Arby’s roast beef sandwiches. I took one into the living room where Andy was and walked right past him. I could see him point his nose in the air and twitch it. He was interested in the roast beef sandwich. Curious to see if he’d eat it, I pinched off a bite and gave it to Andy. He snapped it up. Baby Boy loved it.

Eventually, Andy would not wait for me to give him some but would press the matter by walking right up to my desk and stare at me. He never went to my desk in the living room because it was in a corner and the cramped quarters scared him. The love of tooties won over his fears. Andy would ignore his claustrophobia and get his tooty. He loved Arby’s roast beef sandwiches that much.

I would buy 4 or 5 roast beef sandwiches from the $1 menu, cut them into quarters and feed them to Andy over the weekends when I was there. The Arby’s workers came to recognize me and make small talk saying “You must really like these.” I didn’t have the heart to say it was dog food. For the sake of politeness, I kept that to myself.

Andy’s love affair with Arby’s roast beef sandwiches lasted almost to the end.

Abby the Recidivist

By the time Abby was an adult, she knew she should not eat off of the counters or tables. I scolded her several times when she was younger and even gave her a couple of spanks. Abby got the message loud and clear. When she was an adult, she would not eat people food unless we offered it to her or if some had dropped on the ground.


My mom told me how she had made a sandwich, put it on the coffee table (eye level for Abby) but had to go back in the kitchen to get something she forgot. My mom returned to the den and saw the sandwich was gone. Some people poo-poo circumstantial evidence, but it doesn’t take much of an inference to know that Abby took that sandwich. Unless the sandwich grew wings or legs and flew or walked away, the only way it could have vanished was if Abby took it. Abby was over 10. She knew better.

Abby tried to act nonchalant. My mom looked at her but Abby deliberately avoided eye-contact. My mom asked her: “Did you do that?” Abby strained to look the other way and licked her lips. My mom punctuated the scolding by saying “bad girl.” It was too much for Abby to bear. She went to my mom and tried to huggy and kissy her. My mom didn’t have the heart to discipline her. Deep down, she thought Abby was cute because she could be so sneaky.

Abby knew she did wrong. Like old people who break the rules and norms in society, Abby didn’t give a shit if she got caught. She wanted that tooty and got it. Also like old people do, Abby reverted to behaviors of her youth but in Abby’s case, it was cute.

Dodo & People Food

Dodo loves people food and can be quite pushy trying to get some. I was down in Raleigh visiting the other day. I had cooked a Red Baron Deep Dish pizza. They are surprisingly good. Dodo thought so too. As I sat down in the living room, Dodo ran into the living room from the foyer and jumped on the couch right beside me. He stared at me and cried.

He wanted that pizza and even took a step within inches of the slice in my hand. I tore off  pepperoni and placed it beside him. He ate it all. I did it again and again. Everytime, Dodo wanted more and more. When I was down to the crust, I put it beside him, and he licked the sauce off the crust but left the crust alone.

Dodo also like ice cream. He also like the filling in Twinkies and choclolate eclairs. He loves hamburgers. He can eat 1/4 of a burger in one sitting. He does prefer I  mash up the burger before serving it to him. It makes it easer for him to eat.

Like Taking Candy From a Baby

One habit the babies had that I had a hard time breaking was their taking food from kids. I blame myself mostly for this bad and embarrassing behavior. When I would give food to the babies, I would grab a morsel and place the food close to their mouths and at their eye level. I suppose over time, the babies associated any food placed at their eye level as a gift for them, fair game. The kids, being kids, would walk around with the food in their hands and did not think a dog would take it from them. In no way did the kids protect their food so since the food was at that low elevation, the babies would grab it from the kids and gobble it up.




I was so embarrassed. Normally, I found that the most effective way to discipline a dog was to catch them in the act. However, I had a dilemma. If I reprimanded the dog in front of the kids and guests, my forceful and harsh tone would scare them. I think we have all seen the authoritarian dad at a social function yells at and disciplines his kid in front of everyone making everyone feel quite uncomfortable. However, if I did nothing, the babies would keep doing the same shit over and over.



I would keep an eye on the babies when kids came around and would gently scold the babies whenever they tried to take a kid's food. But since I didn't yell at the dogs or put the fear of god in them, the dogs kept doing their mischief.



Looking back, I should not have trained them to take food directly from my hand. I should have placed the food in their bowl or on the ground. Of course, some would say that I shouldn't have given them any human food. This was something I couldn't do. They were so cute when they begged. That kind of cuteness made me weak.

Abby Loses Weight

When I moved to NC, I set a goal to help Abby lose weight. She weighed 95lbs when I moved away and now topped out at nearly 120lbs. She was a big-boned girl but 120 was way too much for her. She had the perfecta of problems for overweight people or dogs: laziness and gluttony. She loved to eat and to make things worse, she was a nervous eater. For example, if there was a little turmoil or a guest at the door, she would go straight to the bowl and eat. Abby also was greedy. She wanted her food, Andy's and Father's.


That wouldn't have been a problem except that Andy and Father ate defined parts of the day and if the food was not around, they would skip a meal. They would lose weight to the point where they were underweight while Abby was a pudgy as she could be.



Because of their conflicting eating behaviors, I couldn't simply take away Abby's food without harming Andy's and Father's health.



Then there was Abby's activity level. She was lazy and bored easily. Getting her to move around was a major challenge and my mom wasn't up to the task. However when I moved back home, I was able to take the dogs for walks 6 or 7 times a day. Also, since summer was around the corner, I could also have Abby play in the pool. When I played in the pool, Abby readily got in and played. All of this activity added up and burned off the calories.



We almost always took walks in the downtown area. The babies loved all of the new sites and they enjoyed the car ride to boot. By the end of the summer, Abby had lost quite a bit of weight which showed. One time when I took her to the vet, the vet commented that Abby had a waist line again. She made to just under 100lbs. Abby looked good and I was proud of her.

An Apple a Day

A routine I developed in NJ and continued in NC was eating an apple when I got home from work. When I moved back to NC, I would greet the babies, grab an apple and go out front with them. The babies did their usual routines. Andy would want to play fetch and Abby would sniff around the yard.




After Abby finished sniffing around she would stand by me and want to play tug of war. Normally by that time, I had finished the apple and chucked the core somewhere towards the edge of the yard. One day I noticed that Abby had picked up an apple core and ate the whole thing. Seeing how much she liked the cores, I started giving her the core directly. She readily snatched it from my hand and gobbled them up.



After a few weeks, Abby would sit right beside me anticipating the core give away. One day, Abby being the alpha that she was, she barked at me to give her the core even though I hadn't finished it. Believe me, that deep booming bark got my attention. I couldn't believe how bold and pushy she was, yet at the same time I thought she was so cute.



In time, Andy acted like he wanted the apple. I broke the core in half one day and gave him half and Abby half. Andy dropped the core and walked away. Abby finished her half and took Andy's. After a few episodes of this, Andy either developed a taste for the apple core or his greed compelled him to eat it so Abby couldn't, because Andy started eating the apple cores. So from then on, I had to break the core in half or else the babies would get jealous if one got the core and the other didn't.



Pandy Please still loves apples to this day and will beg while I am eating my apple. He'll crane his neck straight up and give me that cutey-pie face that makes me weak.

A Mexican Stand-Off

One evening while I was in a condo I was renting in NJ, I heard the phone ring, picked it up and heard this “Grrrrrrr…grrrr.” After a half a minute, my mom got on the phone and asked ‘Did you hear that?’ “I did” I said, “Why is Abby growling?”


Abby had squirreled a bone away in one of her hiding places and thought Andy was too close to it. She thought Andy was trying to get her boney and was sending Andy a message. However, Andy had no clue what she was growling about. Since she was growling at him, he postured and snarled at her. On this episode, my mom happened to pick up the phone and let me listen in on it.

These stand-offs never resulted in any fights, but they were always funny to watch. The catalyst for these little tiffs was almost always some kind of bone or treat (tooties). Abby loved her treats. She also loved Andy’s treats and Father’s treats. She did all she could to gather all of the treats doled out. Sometimes she couldn’t eat them all at one time so she would hide them. Some she hid well, such as under tables and couches. Other times, she didn’t do a good job and kept them towards an out of the way place in the den. The den was where my mom and the babies hung out most of the time while inside.

Andy liked his treats but didn’t love them. He could be easily distracted from his treat and would drop it, walk off and forget all about his tootie. Abby would swoop in, grab the treat and add it to her stash. She was a fat baby but under the circumstances she could hustle.

These stand-offs were sparked when a dog came too close to the stash or even if one of the other dogs looked at her stash. Abby would flash her teeth and crinkle her nose up. The other dog would feel threatened and respond in kind to her. These stand-offs could go for several minutes at a time. One of them would stand-down by either leaving the room, or one of the people would chastise the babies or simply remove the tooties.

Alienation of Affection

My dad took this picture of Abby. She was begging for food.

By the time I moved to NJ, my dad had passed through his “period of troubles.” Even though my parents had divorced by then, my mom still kept in contact with him and would even invite him down for the holidays. My dad would accept these invitations. It was a chance for him to be with us, as a matter of fact, his only chance to be with his two sons.


I wasn’t thrilled about my dad being down. In his period of troubles, he hurt everyone in his family either emotionally or financially, including myself. I resented the way he acted and held a grudge against him especially considering that he never atoned or apologized for all the shit he did back in the 90’s. Needless to say, he wasn’t on my list of “My Most Favorite People.” I didn’t want to see him, but it was my mom’s house. It was her rodeo, so I wasn’t going to tell her what she could and couldn’t be doing.

My dad never did things like a normal person. He was eccentricity incarnate. When he visited my mom’s house, he would plop down on my mom’s couch in the den and spend almost the whole time there and would even sleep there much to my mom’s agitation. She spent much of her waking hours in the den. To put it simply, my dad would took over the den and screwed up my mom’s routine. She would stomp and pout to me about it but not say a damned word to my dad. All she had to do is tell him to sleep in a bedroom like a normal person, but she wouldn’t. I would be the one who had to hear her bitch about the situation.

So far, I haven’t said anything about the dogs. Abby was always attracted to food. She had honed her craft of begging to an art. Given how much my dad ate and how often, it was only a matter of time before Abby’s and my dad’s paths crossed. My dad loved dogs and always had one while growing up. I often had to hear how fucking wonderful his dogs were when he was a kid. I could barely retain the resentment because the dogs he got us were awful little shits that bit family members, killed kittens and tried to screw cats.

Anyway, my dad loved the attention Abby gave him and encouraged it by continually feeding her. She hung around him 24/7. I remember one trip during Thanksgiving when I was about to go to bed. Normally, Abby would go to bed with me. On this trip, Abby lifted her head and dropped it down on the chair she was sitting in when I asked her to go nighty. To say I felt resentment for my dad wouldn’t be strong enough. I let Abby stay there and went to sleep. A couple of days later when I had on my ‘traveling attire’, Abby looked startled that I was leaving. She hustled over to me, but it was too late. She had all weekend to spend with me but chose to stay with my dad.

Abby was my dog. I was the one who made her the angel, sweetheart she was. And here was my dad swooping in and stealing the affection of my babygirl. I didn’t like him and especially didn’t like him bribing my dog with food.

About six years later, I would be grateful that those two got along so well. Abby would eventually move in with me at my condo in Raleigh, but a few years after that, her ACL injury and arthritis limited her mobility and she had to move back in with my mom. She would no longer have me and Andy in her life, and given her inclination to depression, I worried that her spirit would be broken.

However, a few months after Abby moved back in, my dad’s health took a turn for the worse, and he too moved back in with my mom. Abby and my dad were both in the twilight of their lives. They also made great companions for each other. I didn’t have to worry about Abby being alone. Other than me and my mom, no one else loved Abby more than my dad.

Abby & Begging

(I don't have any photos of Abby begging, but this one is close enough. Nikki was pretty good at it, too.)

Abby had begging down to a science, an art form, if you will. She knew how to strategically position herself where someone was eating as well as how to give a certain ‘look’ to get that person’s attention. Nothing of Abby’s appearance would suggest subtly, but she knew how to place herself directly in front of the person eating so that the person would be facing Abby and be forced to look at her beg. All of this was done without one’s knowledge until she had staked out her position and locked in on her target. You were forced to acknowledge her just by her positioning alone.

On her last Thanksgiving, Abby tried her best to beg from everyone at the dining room table but with no success. Her next move amazes me still to this day. This overweight dog crippled with arthritis slipped under the table undetected so she could be in the best possible place to get food—directly underneath the middle of the table. No one knew how she got there, and how she was able to sneak under there was funny. When my mom pointed out where she was, we almost congratulated her for her determination and initiative.

But her strategical positioning wasn’t the only tool in her box. Abby could give a look that could evoke so much sympathy and concern for her that you would forget that she was a little fatty who could skip a meal or two. She had this sad, forlorn, long-face that could convince her target that she had been locked in a closet and not fed for days.

The last trick up her sleeve was one of last resort. She would slightly shift side to side. It wasn’t like Andy’s shifting where he looked like he was tap-dancing. Abby’s shift was so coy and yet wasn’t forceful that it would provoke her target. It was a move that said ‘Look at me, please!’

Normally, that would be enough for her to get ‘tumpty’ (something). In the event that didn’t work AND Abby was being ignored, Abby would pull out the big guns and loudly bark at her target in that deep booming voice she had. That would get anyone’s attention. Sometimes in an attempt to tease Abby, I would deliberately ignore her just so I could make her bark. She would be so frustrated, and it was so cute watching her bark like that.

Pecan Pie

Actually, there was a story I remember about my first Thanksgiving after I moved to NJ. On the evening after Thanksgiving dinner, I was sitting in the living room watching TV, what I can’t recall. During my TV viewing, I heard a continuous banging sound ‘bing bing bing’ for a minute or two. It sounded like a little bell was going off—repeatedly. At the time this noise sounded, I didn’t think much of it. However about 5 minutes later, my mom yells out “Andy ate the pecan pie.” I went to the counter where the pie’s remains lay and saw a hollowed out pie with nothing left in the middle and only the crust along the rim of the pie pan. My mom or I didn’t catch Andy in the act. We only had circumstantial evidence.

For those whose knowledge of law comes from pop culture from shows or movies such as Ally McBeal or Legally Blonde, circumstantial evidence is treated like a dirty word, a sneaky trick by the DA to circumvent the rules in convicting otherwise fine and upstanding citizens. But let me say this, suppose one were in Buffalo on a winter’s night and before one went to sleep, there was no snow on the ground. However when one woke up the next day which was sunny and saw that there was 2 ft of snow on the ground, that is strong circumstantial evidence that it had in indeed snowed in Buffalo the night before even though one didn’t “see” it snowing.

And so it was with Pandy Please. We didn’t catch him in the act. Possibly one of the other dogs could have stood on its hind legs and poached the food. Hell, for all we knew, maybe even a family member ate the pie straight from the pan and was ringing a bell while doing so. This is when circumstantial evidence comes into play. When we saw Andy soon after, Andy was licking his lips trying to clean his mouth of all that sweet molasses goodness that got on him. We could also rule out a family member eating the pie because of the binging noise. Andy’s identity tag, a round metal medallion, kept banging against the glass pie pan making that noise for a few minutes. We found the culprit; all that was needed now was a spanking. I thought Andy eating the pecan pie to be so cute that I wanted to squeeze the shit out of him. But for the sake of discipline, I had to punish him. This would be one of the few times Andy would take food from the counter. His willingness to please and his lack of being headstrong made Andy easy to train. He really wanted to be a good boy.

I will admit that when one gives a dog ‘people food’, it makes it hard to teach the dog where and when they can have people food--what is off limits and what isn’t. In their canine eyes, once they know they are allowed to have people food, any of such food that they can reach is fair game. It’s not obviously. They have to know their boundaries making it difficult for people like me who have no dog training experience to teach them as such.

Andy's Growing Vocabulary

On the Saturday during the weekend of my first visit back home after I moved to NJ, I went to the kitchen for a snack. I was looking through the cabinets when I noticed that Andy had tippy-tipped into the kitchen to inspect what I was doing. At first he was simply gazing up at me with his cutey-pie face taking in everything I did with great curiosity. Though when I reached into the cabinet, pulled down a bag of Reese’s Pieces and started snacking on them, Andy’s behavior changed quite a bit.

First, he started bouncing up and down on his front legs while his back legs were anchored to the floor. For a moment I thought he was going to jump up on me or at least lean on the counter in an attempt to get some candy. But after a few bounces, I knew he wasn’t going to do anything that drastic. Realizing this tactic wasn’t working, Andy started shifting his weight again and again from his front right leg to his front left leg while his back legs were firmly planted on the ground. Overall this had an effect of him appearing he was tap dancing. As cute as I thought this was, this was a poor attempt at begging. For some reason, Abby had begging down to an art form. I won’t begin to compare and contrast their begging styles, but Abby was a master at it. Sure, Andy let it be known that he wanted food but he came close to crossing the line from begging to coercion. He was almost forceful and imposing on his attempt to get food from us. There was nothing subtle or slick about what Andy was doing.

A few minutes after I was in the kitchen, my mom walked in and I asked her “What the hell is he doing?” At that point, I didn’t even know he was trying to beg. I thought he had to go outside and pee by the way he was acting so antsy. My mom replied “He wants a tooty.” “What is a tooty?” I asked. My mom explained that a tooty was a treat for the dogs such as candy or cookies. The derivation of this particular word is unknown to me but the word’s usage has stuck ever since. Later that day in an attempt to see if Andy really knew what a tooty was, I called out to Andy “Do you want a tooty?” Sure enough, Andy trotted into the kitchen expecting some kind of treat (He got a tooty by the way). This new word, a part of an ever growing list in Andy’s vocabulary, has been a part of his lexicon for the last 12 years. When I offer him food, I often ask him if he wants a tooty, and he will reply by perking his ears, craning his neck and cocking his head a little to the side in a display of cuteness that words cannot do justice to how cute it really is.

Man Cannot Live by Bread Alone

(Abby is right beside the part of the counter where the loaf of bread was. The main counter is to the left.)

My grandmother owned a bread maker which I used a couple of times a month. I would make bread, pizza dough and donuts with that bread maker. Normally I’m skittish about baking with yeast because it’s a pain properly preparing yeast based products since the optimum temperature in which the yeast will work is somewhat narrow, too cold, the yeast’s “activity” is too low and the bread won’t rise, too hot, and the proteins in the yeast will breakdown, and once again the bread won’t rise. The bread maker removed that attention to detail needed for baking with yeast that would otherwise overwhelm my occasional fastidious self. Sometimes in the kitchen, the chemist in me comes out and my overly cautiousness can double the time needed to measure out or weigh things. And yes, I do have a kitchen scale which I absolutely love.

So, on the second weekend of my mom’s Great Britain trip, I baked a loaf of bread. The amount of work needed for fresh bread was cut down quite a bit with this bread maker making this task easy and routine. It was so easy and routine in fact that I can’t even remember making the loaf itself on that day. However where things do become vivid is when I removed the loaf from the bread maker and cut a slice, putting the loaf on the side counter while I put the sliced-off piece on the main counter. Now the loaf, or the rest of it, was at my back. I was putting some butter on my slice of bread when I noticed Abby hustling down the kitchen and into the dining room. “How odd”, I thought. She didn’t seem to be in a playful mood, and no one was in the other room calling her, “Why is she running like that?” As I walked towards her, I noticed an empty space where the remaining loaf had been. Abby took the loaf and darted into the dining room with it (I have mentioned that she was getting bigger, right?). I have no doubt that if I gave her a chance, she would have eaten the whole thing! I couldn’t believe how stealthy and bold she was in taking that bread. I didn’t hear a thing, nothing, and my hearing is pretty damn good.

In my heart, I thought it was cute and funny that Abby would sneak on the counter and take the whole loaf of bread like that, but on the outside, I had to maintain some standards and discipline by admonishing her and giving her a ‘little spank’. I took the loaf from her and threw it away. I said the usual things like “Bad girl”, “Did you do that?” or “Do you want a spank?” I swatted her rump but didn’t hit hard. By this time, the events leading up to the spank, such as saying the word ‘spank’ itself was more upsetting to Abby than the actual spanking itself.

I think the lesson she learned was “Don’t take food from Gary” and not “Don’t take food from the counter” which I intended it to be. A couple of years later when I was no longer living at home, my mom told me a couple of stories of how Abby sneaked food off the kitchen counter and also the coffee table. The coffee table is right at eye level for her so any unattended food there was too tempting for her to pass up. However when she took a sandwich from the counter when she was around 10 or so, she knew better and was trying to get away with something since my mom, the non-disciplinarian, was home alone and wouldn’t spank her.

As a matter of fact, I think her lesson from that day when she took the loaf of bread from was indeed “Don’t take food from Gary” and not “Don’t take food from the counter.” When Abby lived with me at my condo in the downtown Raleigh area, not once did she take food from my counter or coffee table even though she had ample opportunities to do so.

That loaf of bread would be the last I made, ever as of this writing. My aunt wanted that bread maker, so she told my mom to give it to her, which she did. How often did my aunt use it, I don’t know. The last time I saw it was at my aunt’s house sitting in the utility room above the washer and dryer.