Living to Eat, Not Eating to Live

I love Apollo. I really do, he’s my best friend and I’d do anything for him. However, I have to admit that he has an unhealthy relationship with food. Ever since he was small enough to fit into the palm of my hand, Apollo has shown that he lives to eat rather than eats to live. Be it the food in his bowl, treats or food that the people in the house eat, if there is food nearby that is Apollo’s only focus. He has even gone so far as to identify what certain foods’ English words are so that he can perhaps get a bite. Pizza has been his resounding favorite over the years, and as a result pizza has been the victim of many food-nappings in our house.

Take last night for example, my parents brought home two pizzas from Beer Barrel to eat and like any other family they set the pizza on the counter. Rookie mistake. As soon as they turned their back to the pizza Apollo snuck carefully into the kitchen, examined the counter for his target swiftly knocked the pizza off of the counter to eat it. I honestly believe that in the 5 years of having him this exact scenario has happened enough times to reach double digits. His sister Khloe, however, has never had this problem. She is patient in her pursuit of food. Whenever we have dinner, while Apollo is trying to get his face as close to our plates as possible Khloe sits patiently beside the table. She only looks up at us as if to say “please,” but never would venture upon taking any food for herself without the explicit permission of the people at the table. It is crazy to me just how different my dogs’
temperaments are when it comes to food.

 And this behavior carries on much further than just food. Anything that is interesting to Apollo’s eye will be eventually meet his mouth. This has included anything from toys, to leaves, to the most unfortunate of them all: pills. There was one day a long time ago when I came home from school to find that Apollo had eaten most of a bottle of ibuprofen. Needless to say I was freaking out, and immediately I made him drink peroxide in hopes to make him vomit out the toxic pills. To my delight, nearly none of the pills had disintegrated in his stomach and he actually did not have symptoms after the fact. But, this story goes to prove my point that absolutely nothing is off limits. I love Apollo, I really do, but sometimes I just wish he would eat to live, rather than live to eat.