Scraping the Pan
I never set out to teach my dogs that the scraping of a cake pan means special crumbs in their dishes but they learned it nonetheless. Desy has always been an "in the house" dog since she was a puppy and has been familiar with the scraping of the pan all those years. But Rusty lived outdoors all his life until we adopted him three years ago. But he learned about scraping the pan almost instantly.
This morning Rusty had gone back upstairs to nap in the entry room to my husband's study. I decided to put the last couple pieces of cake into the freezer and after doing that, I scraped the crumbs from the bottom of the cake pan. I thought I'd give Desy her share of the crumbs right away, since she was there with me in the kitchen as soon as I started scraping the pan. I planned to put Rusty's share of the crumbs into his dish, which I had set up high so that Desy wouldn't finish his breakfast. He could have his share later, when he would feel hungry.
Before I finished scraping the crumbs together, there was Rusty in the kitchen with me, looking eagerly expectant for his share of the crumbs, now. There they were, the older dog, who has known about scraping the pan all her life, and the younger, bigger dog, who has relatively recently learned about it, sitting beside each other, eyes focused on my every move, waiting patiently for their share of the cake crumbs. I didn't try to teach them that, but they learned the drill from the first time they heard the scraping of the pan.
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