2015-02-01 – You don’t normally find dead animals lying on the sidewalk and, if you do, it’s normally food. So that’s what I thought when I saw the reddish bone lying on the icy sidewalk. It looked like chicken for a couple of seconds. Until I saw the gray furry tail. Someone had a meal. These were the leftovers.

Lefty wasn’t even interested.

Lefty constantly barks at squirrels. Heck. He barks at trees because squirrels live there. If one comes down to the ground he takes off for a chase (which ends with a jerk when he reaches the end of his leash). But dead squirrels. No thanks. He’s sniffing for a live trail. I wonder what would happen if he ever caught one.

The closest he ever came was a fledgling robin. He got his mouth on the bird, but then came the yank of reaching the end of his leash and the bird escaped.

I suppose the reason you don’t normally find dead animals lying around on the sidewalk is that they must be eaten pretty quickly. It’s just that Lefty only eats processed food.

Fresh kill doesn’t even disgust him. It is invisible to him. He can sniff, sniff, sniff within inches of the carcass and not even notice it. And it’s not because of any sort of decay that may have set in. It’s freezing out there.

I’m the one that notices. I notice and I pull on the leash to keep him away. But it’s not even necessary. He’s not going there.

Could he be a vegetarian? On health or moral grounds? Does he recognize other sentient beings and feel some sort of solidarity with them? Does he recognize sentience in me? Would he eat me, if he had the chance?

These are questions that cannot be answered.

Lately, I’ve been pulling on his chain less. You can’t let your dog hurt people or scare people and you can’t let them get hit by a car. But other than that, you can pretty much let them do what they want. And if they don’t want to sniff a dismembered squirrel you happen to find in the middle of the sidewalk. Well, that’s just fine.