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Giving Otis almond biscotti instead of a dog biscuit was a big mistake.
It happened because of cannoli shells. Or, more accurately, it happened because I couldn’t buy cannoli shells. I used to get them regularly at the grocery store. It took me about half a year to get them to stock cannoli, but once they did, I bought them regularly. Then they disappeared from shelves again. The explanation I got at first was that the store was switching to house brands and the cannoli hadn’t come in yet. Soon, they said. Soon.
And although one store official or another assures me every week that they’ll order cannoli and have it for me soon, it never happens.
Last week the frustration got to me so much I thought if I couldn’t get cannoli shells I’d buy biscotti, damn it. It was either that or yell at somebody in the store, and having my picture on a column in the paper usually inhibits my yelling. It did this time.
Don’t ask me why I considered almond biscotti any kind of substitute for cannoli. I guess I just wanted to buy something Italian. But it was a dumb move, because after one bite I could tell I hate almond biscotti. The nuts got in my teeth and the flavor tasted fake. I gave the rest of that piece to Otis. He liked it.
Thursday, when I was out of dog biscuits and didn’t have anything to leave with Otis as I said my ritual, “You stay here, Otis. I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I gave him another biscotti. Since I wasn’t going to eat it, I substituted biscotti for dog biscuits the rest of the week.
I didn’t realize what a mistake that was until we started our Saturday morning ritual. Otis speaks and keeps on speaking until I give him a dog biscuit. My son-in-law taught him to speak, which I thought was kind of cute until it became obvious that Otis didn’t see speaking as something to do on command for a reward; he thought he should be able to speak anytime he wanted a biscuit and get it. So that’s how we do it.
Only this time, when I gave Otis a dog biscuit out of the new box, he turned up his nose at it. He took it, reluctantly, but then he carried it to the rug by my chair, dropped it on the floor, came back to where I stood and started speaking again. Usually he takes his biscuit to that spot, eats it, then licks up the crumbs.
Just to see what would happen, I gave him another dog biscuit. He put it beside the first one. The third one he dropped at my feet, later moving it over with the others. He dropped the fourth one and walked away with his nose in the air.
¬ell, tough, Otis. The biscotti’s gone. Eventually he took that biscuit to the rug, too, and proceeded to eat all four of them. But he left the crumbs. Big, coarse crumbs.
So now Otis is annoyed because he can’t get biscotti, I’m annoyed because I got biscotti when I wanted cannoli shells and my rug is full of crumbs.
Out of sheer persistence, I checked again last week for cannoli shells, but the store still didn’t have any. We’re into about three cannoli-less months now, and I’m hatching a plan.
What I think I’ll do is abandon the struggle for cannoli and start eating dog biscuits.
I don’t know what Otis will do.
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Sara Pitzer