Call her anything but late for dinner!

Day 4

If you have food, call her "Opal!" If you have food, call her "Beano!" Either name works equally well if you're holding anything resembling a snack and/or meal. Heck, you can cluck like a chicken, and Opal Hound comes bounding across the hard boards, clicking her toes and trailing long, thin lines of coonhound drool!

Opal Hound proves she can be patient while Jim cuts the cheese.

And don't bother quoting to her from all those articles about how well dogs do on veggie and grains diets. Opal Hound is a committed carnivore.

We weren't concerned last night when post-op Opal showed no interest in her kibble. She'd eat in the morning after, the drugs had worn off.

"Morning" kicked in about 5:30. In the darkness, her tail softly thump...thump...thumped 

against the plastic wall of her crate. Still, she uttered not a whimper, nary a whine. Just her tail drumming on the side of her crate as if to say, "I hear you out there. I smell you near. I know you are coming to let me out."

Her crate opened, she made straight for the back door. First things first after a l-o-n-g night for this lady! 

She moved well, with a spring to her steps, as she trotted all around the border of the back yard. She took her squat and turned back toward the house, glancing only once over her shoulder to insure I was following. Opal showed no ill effects from her surgery.

So I was somewhat surprised when she again turned up her nose at the kibble. She scarcely sniffed at it before going directly to our bedroom and curling up beside Annie. The girl is showing herself to be a woman's dog.

Mrs. Miller's bed is THE place to be on a chilly November morning!
[From top] Simba, Beano, Opal Hound, Raja

After my shift at the dealership I was home a little after two. Annie reported that Opal still had not eaten, and her activity through the morning suggested she was neither sick nor feeling poorly from her surgery. Okay, time had come to do something.

I found a hunk of chuck roast in the fridge, left over from Sunday's back yard bash. Both Beano and Opal were at my side as I began slicing cold, medium-rare beef! The first quarter-inch thick slice was further cut into bite-sized pieces. Both dogs were drooling at attention. Pieces of meat were offered to both dogs simultaneously, because Beano can get super possessive and snappish when it comes to other critters and his chow.

Please, sir, may I have some more?

The good news, of course, is that Opal wasn't off her feed. She just doesn't care for the kibble served here! 

About halfway through dividing up the roast, my son Brian showed up at the front door. When I returned to the kitchen, several slices and the remaining hunk I had been carving from were gone.

Somehow, I seriously doubt that Opal Hound shared her purloined roast with brother Beano. Clearly, nothing consisting of meat or resembling meat can be left unattended on the kitchen cutting board.