Mornings With Barney by Dick Wolfsie Page B

he was supposed to be watching his figure. I turned so she wouldn’t see me grinning. Rat poison is not funny. Four sticks of butter, not funny. Two cheese Danishes? Very funny.
    The dog’s obsession with food was hilarious on TV, humorous at the State Fair, and a hoot at the television station, but it didn’t go down well with Mary Ellen and Brett, who also never quite understood how nimble a hound can be when aromatically motivated. I sometimes thought that Barney’s periodic escapes from the house were the only respite we had from his gluttonous ways. For a while, he was someone else’s problem.
    And so much of it was our fault. Leave the garage door open and every trash can was upturned; forget to close the pantry door and anything on the floor was fair game. (Actual game, by the way, was of no interest to him. He was scared of moving food.) We finally realized the only way to keep him from prying the refrigerator door open with his nose and using his head as a lever to complete the operation was to duct tape the door shut.
    It would be hard to estimate how many potential dinners (raw food on the counter) and actual dinners (meals on the dining room table) Barney managed to negotiate into his belly. Nothing ticked off Mary Ellen and Brett more than this (to me, understandable) affinity for human food. I called it natural behavior. And ironically, it should have been easy to prevent. Push the food back farther on the counter. How hard could that be? And yet, we could never get it through our thick Homo sapiens skulls. Countless times even our take-out dinners never made it home. Once after putting a bucket of KFC in the backseat, I ran into the liquor store for some beer. Barney didn’t require a personal dinner invitation from the Colonel. That night we had mostly beer for dinner. Barney never read the owner’s manual about not eating chicken bones. And I never got the memo that dog owners need behavior modification more than dogs. They really should call it human obedience school.
    And again, no amount of discipline was going to make a difference. Why? Because the next day on-air I would reward him for this very same atrocious behavior. Barney knew if he could deliver a laugh, he was earning his kibble.
    And speaking of delivery, I discovered that Barney loved pizza the week Mary Ellen was on a long business trip. She said it was to earn a living but it was more likely to seek a beagle-free zone. I was left to care for my son even though I don’t think Mary Ellen fully trusted me alone with Brett, then ten years old, and the dog.
    To make me feel more comfortable, Mary Ellen gave me a detailed list of do’s and don’ts. If I was unsure about anything, she told me, I was to consult the list. Everything—yes, everything—was in alphabetical order. Some examples:
    B: Bedtime (You both need to do this every night. Do not skip a night.)
    D: Dishes (Wash after each meal in dishwasher. Do not mix dishes and underwear in same load.)
    M: Meals (To be eaten while seated—not in the car, and not standing at the sink. Space them out over the day.)
    V: Vacuum Cleaner (About three feet tall, with a long bag attached to it and a hose coming out the side. I don’t expect you to use it, but I didn’t want it to scare you if you opened the closet by mistake.)
    X: Xylophone (It’s the only word I know with the letter X. You may play one while I am gone.)
    She also made it quite clear that she expected Brett and me to eat healthy meals. So that Friday night, I ordered an extra-large pizza from Noble Roman’s with toppings representing all the major food groups. The pizza was big enough for the next three dinners and a couple of breakfasts. The phone rang as Brett and I sat at the kitchen table.
    â€œIt’s probably Mom,” I said. “I’m going upstairs to take the call. Watch the pizza.”
    It would be about ten minutes before I first realized what part of