His Dogness

When the weather is nice, I take His Dogness outside to feed him his breakfast.

His Dogness’s water dish is at the foot of the front steps. Sometimes, a bird will be perched on the lip of the stainless-steel bowl having a drink when I open the door. If so, I pause to give the bird a chance to finish. Some do. Some fly right away.

I sit on the front steps and feed His Dogness by hand, one bite at a time. I have been doing it for years, and, for years, Mr. Whitfield has been giving me a hard time about hand feeding my dog.

Inevitably, a few morsels of breakfast will end up on the bricks of the sidewalk. I leave them there. I know that soon the ants will appear. By the time we are done there might be dozens of them lugging away the morsels one ant-sized load at a time.

Sometimes, His Dogness doesn’t eat his last bite. If it’s somewhere that the postal carrier might step on it, I move it to somewhere out of his path. Otherwise, I leave it right where it is.

By the time I leave for work, ants will be swarming all over it. If the chunk is big enough, the ants may still be hard at work when I come home from work.

By the time I take His Dogness out for his first walk after the sun comes up, there is no sign of His Dogness’s breakfast from the day before and no sign of ants.

It’s one of my favorite things about summer.