When I picked Cleo up at the end of May from her previous farm, her caretaker there reported that she was rather diffident about food. As advertised, she wouldn’t touch a bite of her breakfast or dinner for her first four days here. She was a bit on the chubby side, so Bill encouraged me to ride out her hunger strike — offer her food and then take it away after a few minutes if she didn’t eat. And Bravo was all too happy to eat anything she didn’t want. She gradually warmed to food, first tentatively and now with great enthusiasm.
![Cleo eating-1](https://travelswithmusti.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Cleo-eating-1.jpg)
![Cleo eating-2](https://travelswithmusti.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Cleo-eating-2.jpg)
If Bravo tries to encroach these days, he faces a mortal battle from Cleo, so he’s learning to keep his distance
There’s a trope that people come to resemble their dogs in appearance (and vice versa) that I think (hope) is a lot of hooey. I’m less sure about behavioral convergence, though. I’ve heard stories about people who leave a bowl of food out for their dog all day, and ¾ of it is still left in the evening; this baffles me. Anyone who has shared a meal with me knows I will be acutely distracted if even a morsel of food remains uneaten on my plate or any other within reach, and every dog I’ve ever lived with behaves the same way. Of course I think this is only normal, for a dog or a farm boy, but I wonder if I have my thumb on the scale.
Tagged: behavioral convergence, breakfast, Cleo, converging appearance, diffident, dinner, Dogs, hungry, obsession