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.

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.