We started giving Henry Greenies because he has bad teeth and bad breath.  At first, he hated them and it took him about 12 hours to get around to finish one.  Currently?  It takes him maybe 5 minutes.

Before he gets his Greenie, though, he has to eat his vitamin.

His vitamins are beef flavored, so they’re kind of like treats.  Henry used to love them, but now he won’t eat them without a fight anymore; he just wants Greenies.  MORE GREENIES PLEASE, and such.  Once I noticed he had stopped eating the vitamin, I told him this was not acceptable and he’d not be getting any Greenies until he ate his vitamin first.  Every day.

Henry was kind of down with that.

So this morning, I told him he could have a vitamin and a Greenie, but first the vitamin.  His eyes got gargantuan and he started skittering around on the tile, especially when I untwisted the cap on the vitamin bottle.  I handed a vitamin to Henry and he put it in his furry little mouth…and then spit it out on the tile.

I told him that was not acceptable, so I picked it up and put it back in Henry’s mouth.

He spit it out again, all the while skittering and jittering around because he KNEW the Greenie was coming.

I put my hands on my hips and told him he could spit his vitamin out as much as he wanted, but he knew he wasn’t going to be getting a Greenie before he ate his vitamin.  And I wasn’t going to be wasting my time putting it back in his nasty little mouth all morning.  Henry just looked at me with his huge, nervous eyes; I swear, talking to that dog is like talking to a wall.  I bent over and showed him the vitamin, then dropped it into his food bowl.  Henry hesitantly sneaked over to it, grabbed the vitamin, and ran out of the kitchen.  Then, way too soon, he was back in the kitchen looking at me like, MOM!  I finished it!  I’m so fast!

But he had tried this trick yesterday.  He had dropped the vitamin on the floor around the corner where he figured I couldn’t see it; so I picked it up and put it back in the food dish.  Rinse and repeat.  I told him he was wasting my time with all this hiding the vitamin business, because I was not fooled.  My brain is like two to three times larger than his, so good luck pulling a fast one on ME, furball.

One last time I handed him the vitamin, and he snatched it out of my hand and, surprise!, began to eat it.  I made sure he ate both pieces before I opened the Greenie box.  But the moment he swallowed his last swallow of vitamin, I presented him with his Greenie and told him he was a fairly good boy.

He disappeared to who knows where, but could be heard through the entire house chewing and gnawing and smacking on the Greenie.  It was disgusting.