The mysterious case of the missing sandwich

The Very Fat Dog is a thief. A food thief.

Just a Sunday ago, I was doing various errands around the house. You know, cleaning and such. Now and again, I would stop by the kitchen island to take a bite of a Cuban sandwich. I suppose it wasn't unusual for 10 minutes to pass between bites.

Cessie, the very fat dog, was hanging on my every move in the kitchen. But that's nothing new. This chow hound doesn't even trot unless she has to, but she comes running for the kitchen any time there is the rustle of cellophane or the opening of a box.

With sad, sad eyes, she looks longingly at whatever food one has, following every move from plate to hand to mouth. It was no different with the Cuban sandwich. She lay there on the kitchen floor, perking up when I would pass by for a bite. I suppose this could have gone on for half an hour or so.

I was busy enough that I actually forgot about the sandwich for a while. So I am not sure when it disappeared. All I know is that, suddenly, there was no Cuban sandwich on the island any more.

I did a sort of double take, wondering if I remembered correctly where I'd left it. And there was Cessie, lying in the same spot she'd been in all along. But her eyes gave her away. She knew she'd done wrong, and her eyes couldn't lie about it.

This dog is the hungriest animal we've ever encountered. She seems to be starving all the time, and when we give her snacks such as carrots, apple slices or raw green beans, it just seems to make her even more ravenous.

We've strictly regulated her diet to 3.5 cups of food per day, about 1/3 in the morning and the rest at the time we sit down to our evening meal. We've walked her religiously every single day, usually two half-mile journeys that Cessie struggles through bravely. (Actually, she's doing much better on the walks, even as the summer heat sets in. But she still walks more slowly than we would.)

Given all this exercise and careful feeding, we were expecting her to have lost a few more pounds when Jeanne took her for a monthly weigh-in at the vet last Monday. Nope. We were shocked and disappointed to find out she'd actually gained a pound this month, to 112.

Sorry I haven't written more frequently of our trials and tribulations with the very fat dog. My travel schedule was crazy in April.