LITMIR.BIZ

      It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. Through our network of spies and undercover agents, we learned that the coyotes were planning a big raid on the chicken house, but that came after the Birdseed Fiasco. I would rather not discuss the BSF, but I guess we must, since it helps explain a few details about the coyote invasion.

      See, it wasn’t my fault. If the people around here didn’t want me stealing birdseed, they should have put some decent food in my dog bowl. What’s a dog to do when they put out slop for the dogs? I don’t expect steak for every meal, but for crying out loud!

      Okay, let’s slow down and take this one step at a time. I can point to the very moment this whole mess began, Friday afternoon at five o’clock. On a lot of outfits, five o’clock on Friday afternoon means quitting time, the start of a long weekend of fun, frolic, and goofing off. On this ranch, it means nothing of the kind. It means that another endless day of work is fixing to melt into an endless night of work, then another day and another night, on and on.

      We have no weekends around here, just work and more work. Am I complaining? No sir. Work is what I do. It’s what I want to do. All I expect is a place to sleep and enough Co-op dog food to keep me going. But, see, that’s where the whole problem began.

      At five o’clock that Friday afternoon, Loper returned from a trip to town, wheeled into headquarters, and stopped his pickup in front of the machine shed. I happened to be there and saw the whole thing. He stepped out of the pickup and gave me a grin.

      “Hank, this is a good day. I’ve figured out how to cut ten bucks a month off my dog food bill.”

      Somehow, that didn’t thrill me, so I went to Slow Puzzled Wags on the tail section.

      He continued. “There’s a new store in town: The House of Thrift. Their motto is, ‘We’d skin a flea and sell the hide.’” He chuckled and gave me a wink. “It’s a cowboy kind of store, and they’ve got their own line of dog food.” He pointed to a fifty-pound sack in the back of the pickup. “Cheapo Brand dog food. You’re going to love this, pooch.”

      Oh really?

      Chuckling to himself, he opened a corner of the sack and filled the overturned Ford hubcap that served as our dog bowl. “Okay, bud, dig in. Tell me what you think.”

      I moved my nose closer to the heap of brownish kernels and gave it a sniffing. We’ve discussed Co-op brand dog food, right? It has the smell of stale grease. This stuff had the smell of . . . I couldn’t even describe it. Bad.

      I gave him Sad Eyes and Slow Wags, as if to say, “You’re kidding, right? This is a joke?”

      His smile faded. “Hank, this isn’t the Waldorf-Astoria. Give it a try, you might be surprised.”

      Okay, I gave it a try, one bite, and sure enough, I was surprised. It tasted even worse than I’d expected. It was like cardboard. Goat droppings. I backed away from the bowl and used my tongue to sweep the crumbs out of my mouth.

      Angry lines gouged a path across Loper’s face. “Well, it’s dog food, and you’re a dog. When you get hungry, you’ll eat it.” He went to the house, shaking his head and muttering about “fussy eaters.”

      Oh yeah? When I got hungry, I might eat tree bark, but I would NOT eat Cheapo. What an outrage, feeding such garbage to the Head of Ranch Security! For years I had put up with the Co-op brand and that had been bad enough, but this stuff made Co-op look like a gourmet meal.

      If he thought Cheapo was so good, he ought to eat it himself . . . but of course that would never happen. The people around here would never think of eating anything that came out of a fifty-pound sack, but when it comes to their dogs . . . oh well.