Food fight

The Tank has always been a picky eater.

Okay, "picky" might not be the best word, but it's the best I can come up with. When Soldier Son first found him at the local shelter, Tank was pretty much skin and bones. He had apparently run away from his previous home (easy enough to figure out if you know how high he can jump and how easily he gets out of fences), and he may not have eaten much after he got to the shelter. He weighed in at about 40 pounds at maybe 4 months old, but his obvious ribs and mournful eyes definitely made him look pitiful.

When SS got him back to the apartment where he was living with a roommate with a greyhound, the guys experimented some to find that Tank seemed to be happiest with a big bowl of food always down in the kitchen floor so he could eat whenever he wanted to.

That hadn't been my routine with my little Alpha Bitch; I had heard for years that dogs will eat until the food is gone, so their person's job was to be sure they got the right amount of food during a day in one or more carefully measured servings. What had been working for AB and me was that I put her in her kennel with her day's ration of food and a bowl of water, and she downed her food sometime between the time I left for work and the time I got back home.

Not so Tank when he moved in with me several months after SS got him. I tried, honest: I got a special big food bowl for it, filled it to the top, and put it in his oversize kennel with him and a bowl of water. And a cookie, just for good measure.

For days, I came home to find food all around his kennel and a dog who appeared to be quite pleased with his handiwork. Me, not so much.

I caught him red-handed (mouthed?) one day when he was happily "sweeping" his food bowl clean with his favorite stuffed tiger in his mouth. Aside from the fact that I didn't know dogs understood the concept of "tools," I was pretty sure it was time to give up on giving him food in the kennel.

We didn't own a food bowl big enough to stay full for any length of time with two dogs in the house, so I bought two galvanized gallon buckets, filled one with food and one with water, and hoped AB wouldn't turn into a pot-bellied dog with food available all the time.

A few weeks ago, I thought I'd been caught changing dog food brands when I came home and saw that Tank had turned the bucket over and sloshed food over a good portion of the kitchen floor.

I found an adorable bucket at the local WallyWorld that had several apparent advantages over the previous one: it had a larger base so it would be harder to dump over; it was painted red, white, and blue for Independence Day; and it was on sale cheap. I snagged it and placed it in the corner of the kitchen, full of the new food. Tank turned it over.

I scrounged around in the garage for a suitable substitute and found an old plastic dishwashing pan. Out with the red, white, and blue and in with the sudsbucket. Tank turned it over.

When I took off for a week in Italy, I left the dogs at home with Number One Son, who has been hard on the job of making Tank more responsive to commands. As I headed to the kitchen on my first night back, NOS said proudly, "Oh, yeah, and Tank hasn't dumped the food since you left."

The bucket was in front of the sink, on its side—and the food was all over the floor.

Other than the dumping of the food, Tank has been fine with the rule that the food dish is community property; the buckets were a little tall for AB to eat from them easily (she's smaller at 30 pounds than he is at 60), but the washtub is just her size. And they seem to be fine with sharing "leftovers"—the last hint of food off dinner plates before they go into the sink. But Tank has been snippy about letting AB eat while he's eating, and he appears to have decided that she doesn't need to eat at all while he's around.

That hasn't been a huge problem most of the time; Tank has been sleeping upstairs with NOS since SS left for basic training, and AB has slept downstairs with me. I typically toss a puppy cookie upstairs for Tank at night, and he knows that's his signal to go upstairs to bed; AB scoots into my room to get her cookie, but then later during the night she slips back to the kitchen for "supper."

Not so much last night. NOS and his buddy Shrek had decided to go out on the town, so Tank was left downstairs with me. He's really an affectionate animal, and he got his feelings hurt when he tried to get into bed with me only to have AB snarl and snap at him and run him away. That's not acceptable behavior, so I put her in her kennel for time out and went back to bed. Tank apparently couldn't figure out why AB was staying in the den, where her kennel was, but he clearly didn't want to miss any action, so he stayed in the den with her.

AB woke up in the night and whined to go outside, so I dragged myself out of bed and let her go. When she came back in, she appeared to have gotten the message because she let Tank climb up on the foot of the bed. In fact, when I woke up later in the morning, she was gone and Tank was sawing logs on the pillow next to me.


When I dragged myself to the kitchen, AB started to whine around the food dish. Tank would have nothing to do with that and snarled and snapped at her. Why I didn't think to stuff him in his kennel for that is beyond me; maybe the drugs I've been taking for my allergies had gotten the best of me.

Instead, I rounded up an old doggie dish and filled it with food for AB. Tank ate it.

While he was working on that one, I got out a smaller dish and filled it for AB. Tank ate that, too.

He hadn't finished with the larger dish, so I took it into the den for AB. Tank followed and took it back over.

I snagged the smaller bowl, filled it, put it in my room, and shut all the doors. AB polished it off.

Tank dragged the larger dish around the den for the rest of the morning, working on it periodically as if to remind AB it was his. When she approached it, he either snapped at her or dragged the dish away.

Late in the afternoon, she went into the kitchen to eat from the washtub, and he growled her into intimidation.

I've got his number, and I'm off the antihistamines.

One more growl, and Tank gets a turn at time out, too.