Pork Femur Shenanigans and the Beginning of Our "Pack"

Happy Friday Urban Mushers!

As we celebrate Riley’s birthday today (be sure to wish him a happy birthday on Twitter!), we thought we’d share a fun story about Boo and Pence.

But before we get into the story, don’t forget about our Noxgear giveaway! Once we hit 300 subscribers, we will choose one subscriber at random to receive either one of the harnesses pictured below as a thank you for supporting us. The more people you refer, the more entries you get into the drawing.

Okay, story time!

This is a moment we look back on and consider the first time Boo and Pence became their own pack. A couple months ago, we noticed Boo’s breath started smelling really bad. I (Riley) personally think it always smells bad… We hadn’t changed his food at all, so we weren’t sure what was causing it. We thought maybe he had a tooth issue going on, but he would fight us every time we tried to open his mouth. No surprise there.

Finally, Hannah was able to get a quick look inside, and everything seemed ok, except what looked like some tan, hard build up on some of his teeth. Our best guess - doggy plaque. It had been a while since he had any hard bones to eat, so we thought we’d try a pork femur. Supposedly, they should last a long time and the gnawing would clean his teeth. Of course, if we got one for Boo, we had to get one for Pence as well.

We went to the store and picked out two large pork femurs. When we returned home, we unwrapped each bone, and realized they were going to be messy. Chunks of fat and other crumbs were already falling off. It was raining, so we couldn’t give the dogs their bones outside. We decided they could eat the bones in their crates. Maybe not the best move on our part.

Boo immediately grabbed his bone, went in his crate on his own, and went to town on it. We gave Pence her bone, and she immediately ran into Riley’s office to bury it in the couch, making a mess. Obviously not ideal, especially on white carpet. We took her bone and put it in her crate. She followed and laid down in the crate, but wouldn’t touch the bone.

After a while, she still hadn’t touched her bone, so we picked it up and she went back to her couch. In the mean time, Boo had already eaten a big chunk of his bone! He wasn’t messing around.

We felt bad for Pence, so we tried to give her pork femur back to her. We put towels down on the dog couch thinking maybe if she would eat the bone on the towels, it wouldn’t make a mess. We were wrong. She pushed the towels out of the way and tried to bury it again.

We took the bone again, and put it in her crate. But again, she refused to eat it in her crate, so we decided to take her bone again until the next morning when she could eat it outside. Boo was still gnawing on his bone like crazy, half gone at this point, only like 30 minutes later.

And here’s where things get exciting…

Soon after, Pence went to the back door like she needed to go outside to potty. Of course, every time she goes outside, Boo thinks he’s missing out on something and goes outside too. We opened the door, and Pence acted like she’s about to walk out, and Boo immediately drops his bone in his crate and flies out the back door.

When Boo landed outside, Pence did a 180 and beelined it for Boo’s crate. She grabbed his bone, booked it out the back door, and began digging a hole to bury it. Boo was absolutely clueless. She’s a very smart girl, I’m sure she had it all planned.

I felt bad for him. When he came back inside, he was digging through the blankets in his crate to find his bone and was clearly frustrated. After I stopped laughing and applauding Pence for her sneakiness, I went to retrieve Boo’s bone and returned it to his crate. He ended up eating almost the entire thing within a couple hours, saving a few small pieces for later by burying them with his nose inside his crate.

At least it was his crate and not in the couch.

The next day, we gave Pence her bone outside. She chewed on it briefly, but then began digging again to bury it. And clearly she couldn’t find the perfect place, because she dug about 17 holes. Boo even started digging holes, which he had never done in Indiana before.

We thought “oh boy, what have we done.” Their inner pack instincts were definitely shining through in this moment. We let Pence outside by herself several times to allow her time to eat her bone without Boo trying to steal it. She eventually ate most of it. The lawn mower found a few scraps of bone in the yard. I’m not convinced there aren’t still some pieces buried out there somewhere.

Unfortunately we don’t have any photos of this incident because it all happened so quickly and we weren’t expecting it to be so dramatic. But we love the story because it was the first time we really saw the pack mentality come out, with the dogs just being dogs together.

Up until this point, they hadn’t really shown this. They tolerated each other, but it was like they were still trying to figure out how things were going to run now that Pence was here. Everything about being a “pet” was still new to her and Boo was used to being the only child.

This was also new to us as well. When we first brought Pence home, Blair warned us about Pence’s “skill” of digging holes and burying rocks. But for the first couple months, we didn’t see any signs of that at all. And of course we’ve been around a group of dogs together before, but we’d never lived with a “pack” before.

So with the combination of Pence’s deception, the mini fight over the bone and the new past time of digging in the back yard all happening within a span of one day, I (Riley) am not going to lie when I panicked a little about how those two might start behaving.

Happy to report no such shenanigans like this since that day, but we also have steered clear of pork femurs. But it might be time for another one with how Boo’s breath has been smelling lately.

At least we know what we’re up against this time…

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