A dog and her bone...

One of Aesop’s Fables is a tale about a dog and his bone…after receiving a bone from a butcher, the dog starts to hurry home with his prize, but runs into trouble when has to cross a bridge. While on the bridge, he looks down and sees his reflection in the water, mistaking his own image for that of another dog with an even bigger bone. So he opens his mouth, dropping his own bone to go after the bigger bone, only to fall in the water, struggle to swim back to shore, and end up with no bone at all. The moral of the story of course is that it is foolish to be greedy.

I’m not so sure that this classic fable really resonates with modern day pups. At least, I’m certain it doesn’t with Ella. First of all, Ella would never go to the butcher herself to get the bones – momma does that for her. Second, if Ella dropped her bone in the water, she’d look to momma to jump in and fish it out for her. And naturally, momma would. Third, if Ella did lose her bone, I think the photos below quite clearly illustrate that there is no shortage of back-ups. In fact, in this context, it would be foolish to NOT be greedy and take advantage of the opportunity to amass a personal fortune in bones.

Clearly Aesop didn’t consider the influence of doting and overly indulgent furparents when he originally wrote this fable. Maybe he didn’t anticipate our culture would ever evolve to this point, but I suspect that perhaps things weren’t so different back then, and Aesop just left out the part about the pup running back to the butcher with sad eyes and a cocked head, ultimately suckering him into giving him a replacement bone fit for a king. I find it hard to believe that even the ancient Greeks could resist the pout of a poor, wet, hungry pupper…














Remember I said that if Ella dropped her bone, she'd expect me to go fetch it? Well here's proof... (she's not spoiled at all...and I am not the least bit whipped...really. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to run...Ella has an itch and can't be bothered to lift her leg to scratch it...)