The Battle of the Boney Bone

George with his pet snake.
You'd better not
touch that, either.

Every night, when Larry gives George Hilton Beagle the small rawhide treat we have so cleverly named the “boney bone,” George trots off to find me, drops it at my feet and growls softly. Then he barks.

This is his way of saying that this particular boney bone is HIS, and that I’d better not try to get it or there will be

HELL.

 TO.

 PAY.

George seems to think that the treats we give him — so foolishly — are things we will immediately want back, once we regret the error of our ways.

Thus challenged, I naturally have to make a grab for it, but he snatches it up and dashes off to another room.

We run, we feint, we stop and stare at each other like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

“Drop it, bitch,” I tell him, and he drops the boney bone, tauntingly. At my slightest motion, he grabs it up again and dashes room to room to room.

“Tonight is the night I’m GETTING that boney bone!” I tell him, hot in pursuit. “Say goodbye to it!”

I feel, strangely, a little like Wile E. Coyote.

Sometimes I hide behind a door, which worries him. A ridge of hair on his back rises like the spines of a stegosaurus, and he barks with mad, abandoned joy when I jump out from my hiding place. And we’re off again!

This kind of thing continues until I slow down and collapse on the sofa, muttering, “Okay, okay. Enough, enough.”

Then George settles down happily to eat his boney bone, reassured that he is a streak of tri-colored lightning, much faster than any pokey old human.

George chews his treat with great satisfaction, knowing that I have once again been put in my place. And I rest gratefully until he finishes the boney bone, and it is time for us to go outside and pooty.