Beg for it, steal it, work for it.  Just get as many treats as you can!  That was Artie’s motto.

When we adopted him, they told us he was “highly treat motivated.”  Ha!  That was the world’s largest understatement.  That dog would sell his tail for a table scrap.  The Archives are full of crazy Artie food stories.  He managed to sneak quite a bit of food off of tables and counters.  He was always found out though because he had the worse poker face ever.  As soon as we came inside, we’d find him cowering at the front door, ears back and unable to meet our eyes and we’d know that he’d found something to eat.  The girls learned that snack bags and milk cups left unattended were fair game.  I learned anything left near the edge of a kitchen counter was also likely to disappear into the bottomless pit of his stomach.  Even Kat and Josh have their own repertoire of missing food stories during Artie’s overnight visits.  These episodes range from the moment we got him to the moment he left us.  My last clear memory of a food snatch was only a few months ago.  I had recently discovered the joy of baking no-knead bread and had left a large mound of uncooked dough to rise on the counter while I went to pick up Leina from school.  When I can back, Artie was looking guilty as sin.  I quickly went into the kitchen but didn’t see anything amiss.  No ripped open plastic bags, no tipped over trashcans or gnawed milk cups.  But as I walked around the kitchen, I noticed that the ground felt very gritty – like it was covered in sand.  It suddenly dawned on me that there was a fine scattering of cornmeal all over the floor.  The same cornmeal that my rising bread dough should have been resting on!  The whole dough pile was gone and Artie was desperate to get outside.  I can only imagine what his stomach felt like that day!

I often used to joke to Kevin that between our compost bin and Artie, nothing organic was thrown out in our house.  He was better than a Dyson when it came to cleaning up spilled food and you didn’t need to pre-rinse your ice cream bowls.  Artie was more than happy to lick every last ice cream drop out for you.  And the kitchen table?  He learned how to put his front two paws on a chair seat and we’d catch him painstakingly licking every last inch of our table top.  Totally gross but totally Artie.

I found this video of him I took a few years back.  Kulia had dropped her apple and Artie knew the house rules.  He couldn’t take the food out of the kids’ hands but once it hit the ground it was fair game.

And because he loved food so much, he was so easy to tease! I used to hold a juicy morsel right in front of his nose and tell him, “wait…..wait…..wait”. He would focus every ounce of strength on that bit of food as streams of drool puddled around his feet. Finally, I’d relent and tell him, “take nice” and he would reach forward with the gentlest of teeth and then devour the tidbit whole. I never knew if he ever tasted the food because he snorked it so quickly.

Leina, however, had her very own game she played with Artie whenever I served spaghetti for dinner. It was her very own re-enactment of that classic Italian dinner scene from Lady and the Tramp. Artie, of course, was more than willing to play Tramp to her Lady.

Yes, there was no doubt that Artie loved his food.  And he was very lucky because no one in this family could resist those big brown eyes staring so longingly at us.  Leina quickly figured out that Artie would follow her anywhere if she had a handful of his dog food and there were many days when I could hear them squealing upstairs.  Eventually Artie would come tearing down into the kitchen with the girls close behind.  I never did find out what they were doing but whatever it was, it must not have been too bad because as soon as Leina grabbed another handful of kibble, Artie willingly followed them back up for more of the same.  When questioned, Leina claims they were trying to teach Artie to be a truffle hunting dog.  One child would block Artie from the room while the other hid the kibble all over.  Then they’d let him in and watch him sniff out every last nugget.  That would explain all the random dog food I find under dressers and in drawers.

He was only suppose to get two scoops; one in the morning and one at 4pm.  But we never could enforce that rule very well.   And really, one of the biggest joys was watching Artie prance and dance and howl when you spiked his kibble with left over chicken soup or half eaten nuggets.  My fat sausage dog.  How I loved to feed you!