I Love Luna (60)

UNITED STATES—”Put kibbles on the grocery list,” I, Luna, bark out to the Master. He must’ve got the message, since he sighed, “It’s always something. Put big bag of kibbles on the list.”

This week the Master started giving us rice mixed in with the kibbles to forestall a trip to the store. He wasn’t fooling anybody. He’s cheap and inside the fridge was a big bowl of white rice frozen hard as an iceberg. Certain powers that be deem is proper to keep our fridge at the coldest setting. Which is a good way to keep the mold at bay.

However, turning the iceberg of frozen white rice into something edible for us doggies, wasn’t the simplest task. Ice picks, brute force and flame were involved. Why couldn’t he just let it thaw? The Master knows darn good and well that we doggies, me and Baby DeVille, whose right eye now matches his left eye again thanks to the vet’s eyedrops, are bright and shiny—we are straight-up carnivores.

The fact that rice is a common ingredient in most dog food, according to one cyber oracle, inspired his zeal to resurrect the frozen white rice. Plus, it’s a sin to throw out good food, like white rice on which a fifth of the global population relies on for energy. What’s good for over a billion and a half people can’t be bad for Baby DeVille and me, can it?

It sure does sound like white rice gets the good stuff leached out of it on its way to market. Modern life does tend to drive people towards hording time. Processing shortens cooking time (á la Minute Rice) and removes fiber, fatty acids and minerals like magnesium, iron and B vitamins. We dogs can eat fully cooked salmon, boiled liver. We dogs can eat chicken, without the skin and bones removed.

The Master has learned we can eat brown rice “in moderation.” But it does take an awful long time to cook unless you get Thai take out. Peanuts and white rice we can share too.

Here the Master is ready to chicken out on further detail. For fear of misleading his faithful readers. Meanwhile, I Luna am settling into a sedate late puppyhood. Due to a slight resemblance between our modest home and Grand Central Station, we got a text from a neighbor last night saying, “Your gate wide open. I closed it but didn’t put on the hoop.”

Yes, the Master was mortified. Just the suggestion that I might’ve gotten loose, into the asphalt wild was tribute to the affection that’s grown between us. The hoop was a thick gauge wire left from the previous dog-loving resident here. It prevents the gate from snapping open no more than a few inches. I, Luna, am past the puppy jailbreak days. But don’t tell anyone.

I like to keep the Master on his toes.

To be continued…