Take it or leave it

I think my dog is trying to manipulate me.
This goes back to his whole allergy thing we’re going through and my last blog about oatmeal.
We’ve now switched entirely to a home diet and sparing the daily play-by-play of our food-related drama, I’ll just say he’s learned that if he refuses to eat, something new might get added to that food bowl before it hits the floor.
First, he loved oatmeal. A week later, he hated it.
Same with the pinto beans. In the beginning, he couldn’t get enough of them. Now, he eats around them if he’ll even touch a bowl of food with pinto beans in it.
We’re on to tuna now. He loves it and readily eats it plain as treats. At first, he had no problems eating a bowl of tuna mixed with oatmeal. A few days later, though, he’s refusing that too.
I’m beyond bewildered. Add in the fact that Sensi is still vomiting here and there without much of a logical pattern and figuring out what he’s actually allergic to is even more mind boggling.
I am, however, becoming quite sure that he is trying to manipulate me.
In the past three weeks, there’s been changes to his diet every three to four days, probably. At this point, I believe he has caught on to the fact that if he refuses to eat what is given to him, something new will be given to him instead.
After a lifetime of eating dry and boring dog kibble and subsisting only on that and a few vegetarian dog treats, who can blame him for trying? I won’t, but I also won’t tolerate this behavior.
First off, my pocketbook cannot support the eating habits that Sensi is so desperately trying to develop with his hunger strikes.
Secondly, this well-fed dog of mine will not guilt me into cooking better for him than I do for myself.
If a meal of hot oatmeal, fresh pinto beans and tuna isn’t good enough for him, nothing will ever be again.
And so, the dog will starve until he decides this meal is indeed good enough.
I took this attitude last night after I spent a half-hour trying to get him to eat — coaxing him with all sorts of stupid stuff and looking a million times more silly than a mother playing airplane with her baby.
Finally, I set the food bowl down by his water dish and walked away. It was getting late and my husband and I still hadn’t eaten dinner ourselves.
What do you know? While I went to work cooking a human dinner and ignored my dog, Sensi snuck over to his food bowl and licked up everything that was there.
He pulled the same crap this morning. I’m hoping that when I get home, the food bowl is empty.
And if it’s not, I’ll just toss out the old, put in some new and set it down on the floor.
It’s take it or leave it from here on out.