Dog Days of Dieting

 

This is my dog, Cooper.  Yes, he is wearing a Snuggie, a Christmas present from my sister Annie, who loves this dog so much she'd probably give him a kidney if he needed one.  Yes, he is also wearing sunglasses, which he kept on for a half an hour.  Oh, and yes, he is laying on my coffee table.  Obviously, he is impeccably trained and quivers at the sound of my voice.

Yesterday, I was driving to Costco with my friend Lisa and I mentioned my strongly-held belief that if life was fair, guacamole would be a health food and not have 8500 calories in it.  I argued it only made sense that it should be good for you, as avocados grow on trees.  Horticultural studies are obviously a passion of mine.

Lisa said avocados are good for you, blah blah blah.  I said I know the fat is healthy but they have so many calories you can't eat 4 of them at a time.  She looked at me, very confused, and said, "Why would you want to eat four avocados at one time?"  Then I remembered that I am weird and quickly changed the subject.

I can't control myself with certain food.  If there are cookies in the house, I can't do anything but think about those cookies.  The very idea of eating just two and putting them away is just foreign to me.  There was a time in my life when I tried to fight this fact, but it always ended in feelings of disappointment and piles of empty cookie boxes, so now I just don't buy any of that stuff.  Life is simpler that way.

You know who has a good diet strategy?  Cooper.  I envy him and really could learn a lot from him, which sounds crazy as he greets his peers by taking a hearty sniff of their anuses.  Every morning, I give Cooper 2.5 cups of food.  He usually eats half of it in the morning and then spreads the rest through the day.  Some days, he doesn't eat much at all and some days he eats all of it, but it is never like a cookie feeding frenzy when Cooper eats his food.  My dog is a smarter eater than me.  Heavy sigh.

Of course, he isn't perfect.  A few years ago, I had surgery and Coop stayed with my sister Annie for a month.  When she returned with him, I literally didn't recognize the fat little creature in front of me.  He had probably gained 20% of his body weight.  Annie was very apologetic and embarrassed but she admitted that she had been buying him chewy bones shaped like filet mignons, and that she had trained him to understand when she asked him if he'd like a bone in French.  From the size of his ass, Coop went through about 70 lbs of filet mignon bones when he stayed with my nerdy Francophile sister.  Filet mignon bones were to Cooper what cookies are to me.

He self-dieted, only eating occasionally for the next three weeks and was shortly back to his old size, because again, my dog has self-control that I will never understand.  Now, though, two years later, he will occasionally have a nightmare and start moaning and crying in his sleep, and I imagine he is remembering those bones and the pounds they added to his sleek and toned frame. 

Or he could be remembering that he has an owner who dresses him in a Snuggie for Dogs and sunglasses.