In the November 1997 issue of Food & Wine is a charming holiday reminiscence by Julia Child. She tells of growing up in a comfortably well-off home in which her mother (with the help of the “upstairs maid”) pulled out all the stops when it came to setting the Thanksgiving dinner table.
At a last-minute pre-dinner inspection of the silver and damask and elegant place settings, Child’s mother noticed that the 18 individual silver butter plates were all empty of the perfect curls of butter she expected to see. Erna, the maid, was also mystified.
“But I rolled them myself, using the chilled wooden paddle, the way you showed me,” the maid said. “I put them on the plates just a few minutes ago.”
Child goes on to say:
“Suddenly, Mother roared, ‘Where’s Eric?’ our dearly beloved old airedale. . . . Eric lumbered in and sat beside her with an attentive, ‘Who, me?’ expression.”
Case closed.
Crispin prefers to take his purloined butter by the stick. I think if he ever entered a room filled with soft lights and snowy linen, and found 18 plates of butter–unguarded butter!–he might simply faint dead away on the spot.
After he’d carefully cleaned all those plates, of course.
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December 9, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Sherry
Eric showed himself to be truly worthy of that upperclass household by not disturbing any of the place settings when he took the butter.
December 9, 2008 at 3:06 pm
floatingink
Too true. Crispin would just have grabbed the corner of the tablecloth and pulled all that tempting butter down onto the floor where he could reach it!
December 9, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Roxanne
I marveled the other day that I no longer have quite as much worry about such things. I left a stack of fresh cookies on the desk in our kitchen (much lower counter than the rest) on Sunday before we headed out to a holiday party. After I got dressed, the cookies were still there … untouched.
Our late Dal would eat anything in sight, but our 2 current dogs are MUCH better about not stealing food.
December 9, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Bogart Handsome Devil
Mmmmmm… BUTTER. So good it is it’s own food group! 🙂
Love,
Bogart
http://www.toaireisdivine.com
December 9, 2008 at 11:57 pm
floatingink
It’s definitely the foundation of Crispin’s food pyramid–also the Pack Leader’s!
December 10, 2008 at 12:01 am
floatingink
Roxanne–how did you train them to leave food alone? Poor old Crispin had a parasitic infection when he was a tiny puppy that literally almost starved him to death before we got it under control. Ever since then it’s like his brain has rewired itself to turn him into a food-seeking missile. Since it’s his only vice, we cope with it by policing ourselves about not leaving food within his reach, but we do slip up now and then.
December 10, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Roxanne
Other than teaching Leave It, where they get rewarded for leaving something upon request, I would have to say they just naturally don’t do it much. We’ve worked hard at NEVER rewarding them if they get excited and put their feet on the counter. I guess that’s training, sort of.
Don’t give me too much credit. The dogs have a lot to do with it.
September 30, 2022 at 6:55 am
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[…] Hall over at Cat Person’s Dog Blog shared a story about Julia Childs’ dog stealing butter. When I posted a comment about not really worrying about such things, she asked how I taught Lilly […]