happy dog gnawing at bone

Tsukuba Monogatari: Seventh post

As mentioned previously, four dogs attended the barbecue (two Miyagawas, a Kato, and an Ogata). At the end of the day, the only leftover food was inappropriately large and essentially inedible chicken legs (brought by yours truly), which got left behind on the grill as the Japanese (and the Americans, the scurvy traitors!) devoured the Japanese riceballs, yakisoba, and other teppan delights.

Miyagawa-san’s daughter asked if her dogs could have the chicken. I had always heard that dogs should not be given chicken bones; but that must be a culture-based belief, because when I tried to ask if it was OK to give dogs chicken bones (but in my basic Japanese, it came out more like “Hone wa daijobu desuka?”—Are the bones OK?), she replied, “Daijobu desuyo,” throwing Makoto a drumstick. Kokoro got a drumette.

I held my breath as the chicken, bones and all, vanished amidst sounds of joyous crunching. I would’ve felt awful if Miyagawa-san’s dogs had choked to death—on my chicken. It’s bad enough with Koizumi-san circulating horror stories about my pasta, without having two DEATHS attributed to my cooking!

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Happy dog“: Courtesy of kyo628. Licensed under cc by-NC-ND 2.0