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The Battle of Wills....Or Won'ts

© Kathi Mitchell

I sometimes feel that my Lhasas are deliberately trying to drive me over the edge. It seems that I spend half of my life trying to please them. They are not supposed to eat "people food". Unfortunately, either I have somehow neglected to inform them of this, or, much more likely, they find this to be an unacceptable alternative and so, simply ignore it.

For the most part they adamantly refuse to eat "dog food", particularly the dry variety, although it is kept available for them at all times. It can sit there literally forever without the slightest possibility that any one of these kids will go anywhere near it. I have tried every brand on the market, from cheap to unbelievably expensive with the same result...total avoidance.

On rare occasions, meaning the rare instances where Mom refuses to boil one more chicken breast for several days in a row, rare because they have a much better refined ability to inflict guilt on me than I seem to have on them, they have condescended to ingest a very small amount of the canned variety, not without great pain, mortification and stoic endurance of Mom's major failings.

Of course, they dance covert, leap and bound with overwhelming enthusiasm when ever the good stuff goes on the table, successfully causing me to feel like a callous, insensitive, and abusive cad.

At times it seems like they can, at the very least, read and possible are physic. I have tried to compromise by bringing home bones from the butcher that their vet says is safe and healthy for them to have. Naturally, since it is something they are supposed to be able to have, they will not touch them at all. Looking from the bones to me in incredulous shock that I would even suggest they touch such a thing. Of course, they go berserk trying to gain access to the chicken or ribs bones they are most decidedly not allowed to have.

It is like the fabled water torture. No way to avoid it and no way to endure it. They wear you down. Ooops gotta go, it is time to boil their chicken.