Fantasy Foodie: In Memory of a Foodie Dog

~Our Favorite Picture of Tessa Taken By a Dear Friend~

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

A.E. Housman – To An Athlete Dying Young

To say the girl was motivated by food would be a gross understatement. We had a saying regarding food in the kitchen: WWTD “What Would Tessa Do?” Tessa’s (formerly Trixie) origins were largely unknown, but rescue rumor spun the story that she grew up in a mobile home with five kids (she loved kids, after all, they drop a lot of food) and NO MANNERS. When C brought her home, she frequently would stand on the dining room table like it was the most natural place in the world for her to be, never a good sign of early training. She was an unabashed counter surfer, nothing was safe from her food drive. Hmmm, were her formative years filled with days in which somebody forgot to feed the dog? We think so …

Tessa was a fine connoisseur of her dog food. Drop a fresh bag of kibble on the kitchen floor, Tessa would drill a muzzle-sized hole in it faster than you could go back to car to get the rest of the groceries. We invested in a stainless steel restaurant ingredient bin with a lid that she could not manage to slide open, but she would lick “Food Bin” and proclaim her love in a rich German accent “I love you food bin … I will never leave you food bin … except for chicken breast.” But her taste for food went way beyond canine cuisine; thus, C jokingly nicknamed her Tessa Ann Bourdain after Anthony Bourdain, one of our favorite foodie authors.

She had an uncanny ability to figure food out. We gave her edamame in the shell and she somehow knew to chew the tender beans out, then spit out the shell while our other dogs proceeded to eat the tough shell. Then we taught her to pull the tender meat off an artichoke leaf. Amazing! She also LOVED the kitchen (owned really), much to the disapproval of our friend who is a vet. If we were in there cooking, she would watch every move – cocking her head to one side and then to the other as if saying "Whatcha doing? I wanna learn.” Tessa would have definitely have been a professional chef if she could have been. She was always crated when we left the house, otherwise, as C joked, she’d be making herself a Panini.

There were times when her food drive was less than entertaining, like the countless times she dove into completed cakes sitting on the counter. One notable time was when C had spent all day making a yellow cake with chocolate ganache, which was surrounded with a chocolate sheet with a colorful transfer. It was a masterpiece. It was cooling outside and we had momentarily forgotten about it when we let Tessa out to pee. Whoops, our bad! Fortunately, the now “half” of cake was headed to a veterinarian friend’s house with dogs, who better to understand? Another time, in the mere blink of an eye, she devoured 12 of 24 cupcakes sitting on the counter, with only a smear of cream cheese frosting on her chin as evidence of her transgression. But interestingly, she never struck until the task was finished – she always preferred her baked goods fully assembled.

She also had a wild taste for meat. She won first place in dog obedience with stalactites of drool hanging from her jowls as C enticed her with nuked liver. She also stole her fair share of meat. At one dinner, friends brought four New York Strips. C went to grill them and assumed that we were going to share one of the “three” New York Strips – no wonder the dogs were all sniffing Tessa’s crate. Another time, B snatched a beautiful piece of filet from her jaws, gave it a rinse, and put it back on the plate in a position where B would remember so B got the “almost stolen” piece. Did we mention the countless sticks of butter and the five pounds of potatoes … Tessa was incorrigible.

Unlike our other dogs, who do naughty things and display a certain guilt, Tessa never apologized for her behavior (in the words of Bitter:Sweet: “I’m just a bad girl that’s why we get along – won’t make excuses for anything I’m doing wrong”). But for every bad thing she did, she was fiercely loyal and was always willing to work for us whether it was following B out to the studio, chasing any air-borne thing out of her personal air space (geese, Life Flight, Ultra Lights, nothing was immune). She packed as much into her four short years of life as she possibly could.

What really captured our hearts was the way she lived every single day with unbridled enthusiasm for her life. Bounding out of her crate every morning delirious to start the new day, her “puppy-like” attitude was infectious. “What’s the forecast for today Tessa?? MORE PETTING!!!” we would respond in her voice, as her nub of a tail wiggled furiously. Affectionate to a fault, Tessa loved petting and would aggressively seek attention from guests in the form of “nudge,” which was not always where guests prefer to be nudged! As a visitor mentioned one day, “Gee, this dog is so much calmer if I just keep petting her!” Grown men feared her affections.

She then developed glaucoma in her right eye, but functioned as though nothing was amiss. We jokingly called her Bug Eyed Monkey Girl because of her enthusiasm for mealtime - hopping around on her back feet and barking for dinner. It was thought that she probably had a brain tumor; after the last seizure she was unable to see at all and we knew it was time to say goodbye. Some dogs would be able to adapt to a life of leash walks, but this was not the girl for that, she needed to be fully present to be happy.

We made the ill-fated date with Dr. Sue the next day and on Saturday morning, our good friend John arrived with steaks, cakes, and wine for us, and a giant slab of beef ribs for Tessa. B tossed the beef ribs on the grill, and Tessa had her "Flintstone's Meal” all the way to the vet. She appeared to us to be highly satisfied and quite happy. While we know we did the right thing, she has left a hole in both the pack and in our hearts. In the winter time, Tessa would jump up on a platform where the gas stove and warm her hams while looking out the window and guarding. She always needed a job. That is why we, with a smile, know she is guarding the gates of Hell with those flames licking her hams – heaven would have been too boring for her…