When I went to Aldi today, I picked up a rack of baby back ribs, the fully cooked kind that is slathered in barbecue sauce.  Sparky was so supportive.  He knows I love ribs, so he was all smiles and encouragement as I laid them out on the cookie sheet to go under the broiler.

I waited until Sparky’s dinner time, so while I’m tucking in to my ribs, he’s eating his 4 ounces of kibble and half of a hard-boiled egg.  Sparky will like that we are dining together.

We don’t really dine together. I eat like a human and he’s on the floor like a dog, but saying we are having dinner at the same time sounds passive-aggressive. My house is not very big, so it counts.

Sparky may be happy that I get to have ribs for dinner, but we both expect that I’m going to toss him a bone.

We have a good system.  I rip through four bones as Sparky wonders what’s taking so long.  He is always certain that he’s a good boy, so he tries to think up any tricks to look even more endearing.  Then he gets a bone.

After I’ve had four more ribs, Sparky has cleaned up his, and is starting to crunch on the bone to…I don’t know what.  Get to the gooey center?  Swallow bone splinters?   Doesn’t matter, I give him a fresh one, and took the other one away.  We work at that pace until I’m done with the slab.

It feels mean-spirited to take his last bone without something to trade, so I give him one of those petrified bread sticks made out of chickens.  It’s about as long as his leg, so he only gets a third of a stick.  Cutting it is like trying to cut through a chair spindle, but he is happy to have it.