Gold

My name is Alex Elliot. I am a professional Mom of two cats, a dog, an ant farm, and oh yeah…two boys: a preschooler and a toddler. While I am celebrating the randomness of life here as part of the December Blog Exchange, Jodi may be found on my blog Formula Fed and Flexible Parenting. This month's blog exchange topic is to post on silver or gold. We both chose different types of gold.

When I hear the word gold, I think of the biggest gold "object" in my life, my golden child, my golden retriever Gandalf. Until my older son (OS) was born, Gandalf had been the baby of the family. He got a ton of attention, and he was as close to angelic as a golden retriever could be. He had gone through a couple of years of dog training classes, and he had passed the Delta Society exam to be authorized to visit nursing homes or participate in reading programs for children with literacy challenges. The holidays were particularly special for him, as Gandalf and his two feline older sisters had stockings stuffed with treats and holiday evenings filled cuddling on the couch.
Four years ago, however, came the first holiday season where Gandalf was not the center of my attention. OS was three months old, so he got most of my attention. Whatever I had left was focused on another critical goal: making a perfect roast for the holidays. Because I was a vegetarian for a long time, although unlike my friend and host Jodi I am no longer, and because, also unlike Jodi, I'm a lousy cook (although that's been improving!), my prior efforts at at a roast came out just like I imagine a gym shoe would taste. I had seen a crockpot recipe for a horseradish roast. It sounded perfect for a number of reasons

1. I love my crockpot
2. Unless you really mess up, foods in the crockpot are very tender and moist, as opposed to gym shoes which are rarely tender, even when subjected to rain or other forms of moisture
3. We all love horseradish

I bought a perfect cut of meat. It was organic, hormone-free and pretty expensive. I carefully followed all the directions with not even a single short-cut. I even browned the meat on the stove before putting it into the crockpot and covering it with the horseradish mixture. Eight hours later, it came out looking exactly like the picture in the cookbook. I am not kidding; it looked perfect. It was one of my biggest achievements. Okay, now I'm totally kidding, but it would have been rated an A+ by even my friends who are consistently exceptional cooks. My husband, the Big Giraffe, carved the roast. As he carried the festive serving platter to the table, OS began to fuss. The Big Giraffe forked a sliver of meat on his way to help me feed, change, and put OS to bed. The Big Giraffe's lip smacking was even louder than OS's bottle sucking as he declared the roast amazing!
We both were very hungry by the time we got downstairs. We both pulled chairs up to the table and made a significant discovery. The roast was gone! Clearly someone had broken into our house and stolen the roast because it looked so perfect! Then we noticed that the door was still locked. Plus, how could someone have broken in without disturbing the dog. Wait, where was the dog? That's when we saw the flash of gold under the table, as Gandalph finished off the last scrap of beef that he had apparently pulled to the floor. As he started licking his chops, he exuded an air of contentment.
In addition to losing our perfect meal, it occurred to me that dogs are not supposed to eat 5 pounds of meat in so brief a time. I called the vet, and sure enough she was concerned that he was probably going to have diahrrea from it, so we needed to make sure to let him out every couple of hours that night. We didn't go to bed hungry. In fact, the Big Giraffe didn't go to bed at all. He dozed in the guest room, setting the alarm to get up every couple of hours to let Gandalf out. How do you replace a meal stolen by a golden dog? Call Golden Pizza, of course. Unfortunately that was not an adequate replacement, but at least I didn't go to bed hungry either.
Gandalph never got sick. I have never been able to recreate that roast. We wonder if the whole thing was as good as it looked and as the first sliver tasted. Of course the only one who knows the answer is Gandalph, and he's not parting with any secrets.