Questionable Classic: Children and Animals

Since I'm currently out of town, original content is going to be in short supply for a few days. Fortunately, there are a few things I've written over the years that I think people might still enjoy (or at least tolerate). Since they didn't get read much when I first posted them, I thought I'd give them another chance. This post originally went up at the old blog on 15 September 2005. I was inspired to repost it after reading some of what Orac's written about his new, stubborn, and intelligent puppy.

I've been able to resist, for the most part, blogging about the cute things that my kids do, but there was an episode night before last that was just too good to keep to myself.

My dog, Ross, has been porking up a bit lately, and I'd been having a difficult time figuring out why. I hadn't been feeding him more, he hadn't been getting too many snacks, he hadn't been getting into the trash, so I just wasn't sure what was going on. Then, last night, I got a hint of one of the possible causes.

I woke up around 2, and went downstairs to get something to drink. When I did, I found that the lights were on, and my son (who is 6) was down there with the dog. They were both sitting on the kitchen floor, they were both eating Pop-Tarts, and they both looked up at me with exactly the same guilty expressions on their faces.

From what I was able to piece together, my son started this tradition a couple of weeks ago when he was sick and not sleeping well. The dog, who is a fast learner, decided that the tradition should continue, and has been waking him up for the midnight snacks. That was, at least, what the boy claimed was happening. I was a bit skeptical, but an empirical investigation conducted last night seems to have confirmed this scenerio. Dog and boy are now being kept isolated from each other at night.