The Adventures of Bob the Dog – the Corner Store Caper

Time to take a breather, so I'm taking a blogger break for a while. I notice that other bloggers, columnists, and cartoonists pull up things from their archives, so that's what I'm going to do.

Sure enough, on Friday I got a call from Raj, the manager up at the Valero Corner Store. Raj lives one street over and he’s well acquainted with Bob the Dog and said that Bob slipped into the store and wasted a rack of beef jerky and pushed over the hot dog cooker and escaped with about two dozen sizzling franks before they knew what had happened, and he had been trying to get in touch with Cole, but his phone was disconnected. Did I know where Cole was so that he could come and pay for all the damage before the home office made him call the cops?

I explained that Cole wasn’t going to be our neighbor any more, so calling the cops wouldn’t do any good, but I kept my mouth shut about Bob the Dog and the note, because I wondered if my failing to take action might somehow make me liable. After Raj hung up, I peeked over the fence and sure enough, Bob was back in the yard, fat and happy, but pretty bloated after all those freshly cooked wieners and a side of beef jerky.

We had a little talk about his adventures, but he showed no remorse and said quite frankly he was pretty tired of dry dog food and that fresh meat was now his new best friend forever. Or words to that effect. Sometimes Bob is hard to understand, what with the accent and all. We agreed that he should go on living next door as long as he could and that I would pick up some Bugle Boy dog food with “real beef morsels” as Bob allowed that was the only kind of dog food he would even consider.

I didn’t care for this turn of events, and I liked it even less when I found out that the only place in town that carried Bugle Boy dog food with “real beef morsels” was Callahan’s – way, way south – and that it cost about the same as steak at the HEB, and maybe I should just let Bob the Dog knock over Raj’s hot dog cooker every once in a while and plead ignorance of the whole thing. I knew calling Animal Control was out of the question. Bob was way smarter than any dog catcher; they had been called a half-dozen times about two brutish Pit Bulls that wandered loose up the street and the Pit Bulls – not known for finesse – had easily bested the catchers so often the City wouldn’t even send them out on that call anymore.

Besides, none of this was Bob’s fault; he had been left to his own devices and by nature Blue Heelers have active and fertile minds and if they are not kept busy, they will find their own activities – which might not fit in with conventional doggy behavior. I’m sure that’s what led to Bob’s heist of the Monterrey Meat Market.

Next - the Meat Market Massacre