Yesterday, I was making dinner. I bought a fresh chunk of very lean beef from a grass fed cow on an organic farm at our food-coop. I took it out to soak in some Worcestershire sauce on the counter. I wanted it to soak for an hour or so, I went into the living room and put some earphones into my Ipad and started to listen to some music, it was my quiet and very peaceful time. When I came into the kitchen an hour later to start cooking, the meat ($8.75) was gone.

Not a drop left, not a morsel. I was bewildered. No dog of mine has ever – not in my whole lifetime – taken food off a counter, especially so cleanly and quietly and cleverly. The plate had not moved an inch, the floor was clean, the meat was in three chunks. The floor did look a bit greasy. I looked in the oven, in the refrigerator, around the kitchen. It was gone, it had to be Fate. Red never goes into the kitchen, he hates linoleum floors.

It was Fate. She smelled the hamburger meat, came in and ate, and then gook a giant dump outside. So this is war. People tell me all the time that some dogs just do this or that, when I mentioned this on the blog last night, I got a bunch of messages from people telling me that they have dogs that do this all the time, there is not much to be done about it.

That is not my philosophy. I am launching the counterattack tonight, I went out and got some more hamburger meat, put it on the counter, waited for Fate to take a peek, roared and bellowed and stomped my feet, she took off and went under the dining room table. Two minutes later, she came back and I was hiding in the bathroom, I caught her in the act.

Fate is one of those testing dogs, she loves to look me and Maria in the eye sometimes, and say, “make me.” I will  have to figure this out, I maintain the probably fiction that I am smarter than she is. We’ll see.

This is like a chess match, I am very determined when it comes to training dogs, and I believe strongly that they can tell when you mean things and when you don’t. Fate, I said, you will not be the first dog in my lifetime that steals food off of the counter. In fairness, she’s been her nearly a year and this is the first time this has happened, so I imagine she smelled it, got tempted and took a shot.

I was pissed off last night, but there is no point in correcting a dog unless you catch them right in the act, otherwise they get confused about what they are being corrected for. I am plotting and scheming my loves, I do not accept that Fate is one of those dogs who will do that from time to time. We are going out to dinner to celebrate the pub date for my next book, “Talking To Animals,” it will come out in the Spring of 2017. I am happy about it.

Got to finish the final edits in the next two weeks.

We are going out to dinner to celebrate this, the hamburger was  resume tomorrow.