Special Needs Dog
Jack isn’t allowed ‘people food’
He’s on a Special Needs Diet. He’s a Special Needs Dog.
No scraps from the table, no potato chip Olympics bounding on couch.
No Begging, no borrowing, no stealing, appropriating, or possessing non-approved foods. The following items are banned and considered contraband.
First and foremost: No chicken bones.
Bone shards might lodge in, block, pierce and/or prick, his tender pink esophageal membranes.
This would preclude his attending, and exclude him from soloing for
The Howler-Guild Canine Glee Club’s Bi-Annual Dog-Park
Choral rendition of “Song of Moses.”
Jack’s been working on his routine for years.
Rehearsal is everything.
Not even a Special Needs Dog gets a day off.
That’s it, Jack. Sip your tea.
I blew kisses on it to cool it down.
Ordinary Kibbles & Bits are grounds for expulsions and fits.
The good stuff costs $25 a day!
I can barely keep the lights on.
Jack’s meals are prepared fresh by culinary courier, Chef Charlemagne, served in a gilded cut-glass decanter, containing Japanese Wagyu Beef, Blue Jasmine Rice, and sea otter caviar, with a hint of chilled mint jelly to freshen his sensitive palate. Just the way Jack likes it! The experience radiates with a Waterford Crystal lapping spoon you can stick in a candle later to brighten the room.
The following “Not For Jack” list is posted throughout the house to avoid confusion:
No Kibbeh, no kiwis, kale, kebabs, ginger ale,
No Scrapple, waffles, apples, or Strawberry Snapples.
No dairy, no prairie dogs, no farmed fish, shellfish, bugs, slugs, or cephalopods.
No hats, rats, dust bunnies, bowls of keys, things found at the lake, ferrets, fajitas, or carrot-cake.
Armadillos. No Sir and No Ma’am, no armadillo ham.
They’re squirmy and oozing with leprosy, which I consider a byproduct.
No byproducts will be tolerated. These include, but are not limited to:
Bone meal, meat meal, grain meal, worm meal, oatmeal, cereals.
No rendered fats, or fender’d cats, salt, soy, cellulose, no animal, mineral or vegetable oil, shrimp boil, vomit soil.
No walnuts, Grape-Nuts, coconuts, Beer Nuts, Deez Nutz, road kill, or bear guts.
No pets, snakes, spiders, parrots, lovebirds, leghorns or chickadees,
No gerbils, turtles, liverwurst, tube steak, wiener pigs, whirligigs, Newton Figs.
And no cauliflower. Please. It makes him toot.
No MSG, Propylene Glycol, nitrates, nitrites, neurons, neutrons, or second-hand electronics. No corn, corn syrup, no cobs, no kernels, no popping, and, none of that creamy canned stuff either. I don’t know what adjunct that coagulant is, but it isn’t cream.
No natural or artificial colors or dyes; Blue #2, Red 40, Yellows 5 and 6, plain white rice, black berries, Bing cherries, red pepper, gold fish, oranges rhyme with tangerines, green beans, yellow squash, red onion, purple potatoes, or rainbow chard.
It’s a limited diet
With limited, healthy, ingredients,
Because, I love him, and he’s a Special Needs Dog.
But, I’m starving.
I’m so hungry I could eat half a Special Needs Dog right about now.
And, not the Wagyu half.