Every night after dinner it’s my job to feed the dogs, and not only because it gets me out of the dishes – I am the queen of dogs in the Jordan household (as well as fish and houseplants). And every night after dinner, I have the same interaction with my husband. I ask him if there’s any leftovers the dogs can eat, and he says no. Or rather “No!!” in outraged accents. Then I go through all the containers of leftovers in the fridge and ask him if I can give them to the dogs. “How about this chicken? It’s three days old” to which he replies “No! I had some last night.” This is quite likely to be true, because as a daily runner, he often gets peckish in the middle of the night. This doesn’t stop me muttering that he just wants to wait until it’s got mold on it and is unfit to eat before I can use it. Most nights I find at least one thing that he’s forgotten about or hasn’t been able to find with his man-looking, and I can supplement the cheap dog biscuits we buy with that. There’s a bit of give and take, and the system seems to work, or so I thought. A daughter pointed out last night that actually we didn’t have to fight about leftovers. I was quite surprised. Did it seem like a fight to an external observer? She also said it was my husband’s fault for escalating things, but I may have misheard her. It’s given me pause for thought, anyway. Meanwhile, the dogs still need to be fed.
