WHY MY DOG LOVES BIRDS

Canaille, my English Springer Spaniel, has been to the groomer, and guess what was hiding under his furry coat?

A sneaky roll of fat, you know that kind of flabby stuff which pops out only in Summer when you want to slip into last year swimming costume!

For Canaille, that brand-new spare tire is not that surprising, cause that poor guy suffers from a chronic disease : food-obsession!

His pesky cravings don't leave him a moment's rest. They strike unexpectedly and keep waking him up in the middle of his countless power naps. Then, no way to get back to sleep again.

The urge to eat is so strong that he has to get out of his comfy basket and make a beeline to the kitchen, just in case the treat drawer or the fridge door would have been left open.

Unfortunately, most of the time, he gets out of the place , empty-pawed (for non-dog-speaking readers, that means empty-handed).

That's when his inner Dyson suggests a fallback solution which leads him under the table in search of crumbs. Believe me, he works much better than my hoover!

But fake hunger pangs can't be content with crumbs, of course!

That's why Canaille has mastered the finer art of begging, and that's why Christmas and New Year parties have played havoc on his waistline, too!

So, to avoid the vet's scales' rude figures, I have decided to put our food-obsessed buddy on a strict diet.

No more treats, no more food scraps, just two meals a day, period!

Well, I should have remembered that early year diets are doomed to fail...

Resisting our dieter's imploring eyes quickly turned into a constant ordeal, and to crown it all and to make me feel uber-guilty, last Sunday our poor doggy spent quite a while drooling in front of the oven where a chicken was spit-roasting!

As suggested on a website, and to help him ignore the sassy poultry, I offered him some long sticks of raw carrots.

That triggered a total misunderstanding!

Canaille thought he had to replace the food processor, chewed the carrots till he turned them into grated ones, left them on the tiles, and went out of the kitchen looking rather bummed out.

Anyway, in spite of all his attempts to move me, I didn't give him an inch for a whole week, but what was to happen happened...

We are used to keeping pet food in a kind of storeroom in the basement, and two days ago I got sidetracked and left the door ajar.

Then  guess what!

Hey, come on, I agree with you, Canaille is quite smart, but yet not smart enough to open his canned food!

But, after all, maybe he tried to, and as he couldn't, he made the decision to calm down his tastebuds with one of the seed balls we had just bought for the wild birds nestling in our garden!

Well, apparently Canaille has a strong stomach, but I don't, so since I discovered his theft, I keep an eye on him for fear he would...fly away!

I'll keep you informed, but remember that dieting doesn't mean eating like a bird!