Fresh off my realization from my last post that I really love a tangible work product and a real-life reflection of my work, I discovered that my dog really, really likes that too.

It was all prepared, the giveaway for the week–a lovely cinnamon swirl bread. It was wrapped with a fresh kitchen towel, twine, and a neat little tag. Oh, how I love the wrapped bread all ready for gifting. My daughter does too, and she was excited to take her favorite loaf over to gift to some cousins she hadn’t seen in three long years since the last time they visited. When you are 10 and three years pass, well, it’s like meeting them all over again and very exciting. Anyway, the bread was packed, as was her bag because this was not an ordinary hang, this was a pool party hangout and playtime. Basically, the best of summer and being a kid all rolled into one day.

Sadly I was not to be there for the handoff of bread or child, but her older brother was keeping things in hand, and all seemed to be well at home. Until it wasn’t. I walked out of a meeting to discover 12 missed calls and 3 voicemails that were incomprehensible. Nothing gets a mom’s heart racing like that I can tell you. I called home, no answer, I called my son, no answer. I debated calling in the national guard but instead took a deep breath long enough to realize I had a text from my son. “Patton ate the bread.”

The panic was gone, but boy was I certain that the misadventure had caused a fair amount of anguish for my daughter. Actually, that part was clear as I had 12 missed calls.

How it happened was almost a foregone conclusion once I learned more. In my daughter’s excitement to go play with her cousins and be ready for a swim day, she had moved the bread to a low table to be ready for pickup. However, she failed to think about our over-eager and consistently famished golden retrievers. Patton, favorite pup of my daughter, had helped himself. I am not sure what his sister, Posey, was up to at the time, but she didn’t score any. My son heard the wails and came running to find my daughter crying and frantically calling me, and a half-eaten (burrowed?) loaf of bread on the floor. He said when he held it up, the culprit immediately ran downstairs and hid in our office under the desk, tail tucked fimly between his legs. Our rule breaking pup has clearly not managed the art of looking not guilty. Indeed, he repeated this run and hide and look enormously guilty performance hours later when I showed him the loaf of bread after I got home. Play it cool? Yeah, he has no game.

The good news is that I was able to make a new loaf of bread fairly quickly, and my daughter was immensely comforted by the time spent with her cousins and swimming in the pool. The fact that when I picked her up I had a fresh warm loaf of bread to hand over helped some too. As it turns out, unlike the true dog days of summer when the heat and the days stretch for what feels like years, this drama and trauma were short-lived All is well that ends well, and my daughter’s love for her beloved dog is still firmly intact. I mean, how could it not be? Just look at that face.