Our Family Pet, Happy The Saint Bernard, Really ...

Our family pet, Happy the Saint Bernard, really doesn’t eat as much food as one might think she would for such a large dog but just because she doesn’t eat as much food as one might think doesn’t mean she does not have good taste!

Happy is not such a big fan of dry dog food. If you fill her bowl with dry dog food she will often go to it and use her big nose like a shovel to push all of the little dog food nuggets out onto the floor!

In fact, each evening after dinner I usually take any left over scraps of food and mix them up in her dry dog food so that in eating the scraps she will also eat the dog food. My wife Christina is much more prone to just leaving the dry dog food until she eats it but her daddy spoils her a little bit more than her mom does.

Happy is always on the prowl for high quality food. And her life is just filled with temptation. It really is terrible for her. I remember one evening a few months ago. I had stayed up after my family had gone to bed, as I sometimes do to work on research for a sermon or just enjoy the quiet.

This particular evening I got a little hungry and I decided to make a grilled cheese sandwich – my favorite kind of sandwich. The whole time I was preparing the sandwich Happy was laying on the kitchen floor watching me. Every now and then she would lift her head to sniff the smell of the sandwich in the air.

More than once I assured her that this was not her sandwich and to keep her big nose away from my sandwich. After I had made the sandwich I placed it on a plate with a few wheat thin crackers and a pickle and carried the plate into my home office as Happy trailed just a few feet behind me sniffing the air.

I sat down at my desk and Happy sat down just next to me as she would often do if she thought there was a chance for some leftover scraps. After I had sat down I turned – with the still uneaten sandwich in my hand – to reach for my drink and just as I did the dog jumped up and took the whole sandwich from me, chewed once and swallowed the whole thing!

As it turns out the temptation was simply more than Happy could bear to stand on that particular evening! Just so you know the story did have a happy ending and not just of for the dog! I locked her away and made another sandwich.