Feeding your grandparents' dogs--
From a letter to daughter Liz dated a few years ago

Speaking of your grandparents' dogs. I really don’t like the flea-bagged bloated packages of hyperactivity. Get this, while your grandparents are off in Los Vegas, I’m taking care of their dogs. Well, I don’t have a problem with that; I’ve done it before.

Part of the routine is to check their water level and give them a skillet full of dog food, and every two or three days drop-kick Muscle Mouth over the plum tree. That’s the only way to keep the idiot in line (I’m kidding about the drop-kicking, but I am tempted to act out my emotional disfavor with that canine). Oddly, when I take care of them, they behave very well.

Back to the point I started on. This time Grandpa wants me to feed each a half-package of hotdogs each day. Oh boy! Can you believe that? Next year it’ll probably be prime rib. Again, I don’t mind taking care of those mutts, but to feed ‘em high-classed grub is rather wasteful. Think of all the starving people who would rather eat those dogs rather than their dog food. It is a senseless waste of good meat. Have you ever seen those two go after steak and gravy? Now, I don’t mean leftover steak and gravy. I’m talking about the right-off-Granny’s-stove steak and gravy--she has to prepare meals for four, for her, Grandpa, Toby, and Chuck.

They look like slow-motion jack hammers. Maybe you haven’t seen jack hammers in action; if not, you’re not getting the full impact of this image. If the dogs could swallow whole those franks--Great Scott!--they would have.

I have eighteen packages of hotdogs to feed them, one each day. Sadly, I was unable to feed them Saturday. I just didn’t have the time or energy to slither over to your grandparents' house to feed their dog fat. Sunday afternoon I gave each of them a package of weeners to make up for the half package they were deprived on Saturday. After I had thrown the hotdogs into the grass, they looked like a cord of wood strewed on the lawn. The dogs started scarfing and snorting, sounding as if they hadn’t eaten in a week or two, even though they have a number 3 washtub full of dog food in the garage to tie them over between meals.

At first I didn’t think much about what went down. I figured they were dog enough to handle a package, after all they were able to consume a half-package in ten seconds or less. But as they were "eating," it appeared they were slowing down. I estimate it was at the tenth dog when I realized what I did wasn’t the wisest thing to do. Each dog looked at his remaining weenies; I knew they were tempted to eat them, though they didn’t have the capacity to contain them. Have you ever eaten twelve weenies at once? I know you wouldn’t try. But they, being dogs, hadn’t either, but they did. They began chewing their food. The novelty of those stinking dogs chewing their food was . . .well, revolutionary. However, it is what happened next that carries a foregone conclusion to this story. I shall quote you a passage of scripture that alludes to the situation and rings true to the nature of dog and man: "As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly" (Proverbs 26:11). I think you get the point.