THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 2, 1996 TAG: 9609020132
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Fridell
LENGTH: 52 lines
Boomer the Lab and I ate half a watermelon, a small Sugar Baby variety that fits nicely in the refrigerator. Strange how society has downsized our culture.
Used to be an ice box easily held a huge melon. Had you prophesied a melon small as a volley ball, you'd have been reviled as an apostate.
Boomer, 7 years old, began eating cantaloupes under the tutelage of his surrogate mother, the yellow Lab, who picked up the habit from a basset, Duke, a roving Dempster Dumpster who'd eat anything.
Recently Boomer began eating watermelon. Makes no difference how softly one moves to cut the melon, Boomer's there, ears pricked forward, a dark exclamation point, ready for the party.
I lack the patience to pick out the seeds for him, so he gets the heart, bit by bit, chewing each mouthful with a meditative air.
We bought the melon in Virginia Beach at Stoney's Produce on First Colonial Road, a mile or so off Laskin Road at Hilltop. There you'll find a black Lab, Princess, who shucks and eats corn off the cob.
Feigning sleep, she lies under the corn bin. When a customer drops an ear, she picks it up and, under the gaze of the astounded visitor, strips away the shucks, holding the ear between her paws, and eats the kernels off the cob more cleanly than any human could do. Offhand, I can't think of any attraction hereabouts more alluring than a corn-eating dog. For that matter, why journey to Disneyland when she is in our midst?
Billy Hudgins, her owner, said Princess displayed her dainty way of consuming corn when the market opened five years ago. Of a day she'll do away with a dozen or so ears, and the first thing she wants at home is her supper.
``Once in a while she'll go out in the garden, pull an ear off the stalk, and chew on it right there,'' he said.
The vet, consulted, said that as long as she eats just the kernels, that's all right. The cob would upset her digestive system.
When Hudgins' wife, Lynn, was teaching at Parkway Elementary, she'd bring Princess with her when the children merited a reward.
Princess is the market's hostess. At 13, she's not as spry as of yore, but when someone speaks to her, she ambles over, tail wagging. The other day she was dozing on a pallet. When I spoke, she began to struggle to her feet. ``Hello, Princess, don't get up; let me bow,'' I said. That's how you treat royalty.
Talk of dogs reminds me the Annual Basset Blast will be Sunday in Virginia Beach at Redwing Park at 4 p.m. A donation of a dollar will help perpetuate the nonprofit event of bassets, ears flapping, dancing in the breeze. As William Wordsworth wrote of seeing 100 or so ear-flapping beasts ``and then my heart with pleasure fills and dances with the bassets' ears.''
Frolicking, they await you. by CNB