Hambone Day

My mother-in-law is fond of dropping off leftover meat for our dogs; usually in the form of grilled T-bones or spiral-cut hams.
Last weekend it was the ham, with a few slices missing. The dogs had ham in their breakfast and dinner dogfood, and had pieces stuffed into their mouths in-between times as that nagging sense of unease I felt became ever stronger: two dogs and one hambone. Hambone day was approaching.

Yesterday, the pre-cut meat was finished. This morning I was sawing off big pieces of the remainder.

That's it. Today must be the day.

I left the still-meaty but at-the-end-of-its-journey hambone on the counter, trying to put off the inevitable.

This afternoon, during a rainstorm, I decided to quit stalling, and took the bone and the dogs out onto the back patio and we all sat down together on the floor. I set the bone down.

Lilly hulked over the giant bone, as I knew she would -- the dominant dog. She sawed the meat between her enormous jaws, unable to pick up the hambone as it was still too heavy. I kept reaching over and prying off pieces to feed to the much smaller Shiloh.
Mr. Cracker came home and stood in the patio doorway, upset. "There should be two hambones, he said. "Two dogs means...two hams." Two hams? "Mom should know better than that," he continued. He stared anxiously at Shiloh for a while, at last saying to her, "Don't worry, I'll get you your own bone."

He left, to where I didn't know. Was he going to find her some other treat to take her mind off things? He soon came back, though, carrying a smashed cardboard box and a hatchet. "I'm going to make her a bone," he said. "There's no way she's not having any marrow."

With Shiloh standing by expectantly, he laid the bone on the cardboard, and with a couple of chops, had hacked it in two. Shiloh scrambled for her half. "She knew what I was doing," he said, smiling. "I could see it in her eyes."

Shiloh brought her hambone inside and settled down on the livingroom carpet for a good chew. I looked over at Mr. Cracker, eyebrows raised, thinking of my carpet.

"She should be comfortable after all that," he said. The carpet shampooer again. I relented.

Lilly naturally decided to bring her's in too. "Hmmm," he said, making a move as if to block her.

"Now, now," I said, grinning. "That wouldn't be fair to Lilly, now would it?"

Posted by floridacracker at August 12, 2005 06:52 PM