Lucy makes a chump out of us

Lucy is addicted to rawhide bones. We don't let her have rawhides because they are supposed to pose a danger to dogs. They get gummy/gluey as they are chewed and can get stuck in dogs' throats. But Lucy's best friend Macy has rawhides in her backyard, and when they play together Lucy helps herself to Macy's bones. It is very much the forbidden fruit, I imagine. So last weekend, Lucy plays with Macy and comes away with a huge rawhide. John tried to get the bone away from her, and she cleverly managed not to let herself get caught. She ate nearly the ENTIRE bone (it was humungous), and then all last week she was sick. John came home to a very messy cage twice in the week, and when I came home on Thurs I had to let her out twice in the middle of the night so she could get some bowel relief.

So yesterday she had a play session with Macy, but before we opened the gate we asked Brian and Paula (Macy's parents) if they could put away any rawhides since she had gotten so sick. They were very nice and picked up what they could find. We let Lucy and Macy play, and after a little while we saw that Lucy had found a darned bone somehow! There must have been one tucked away somewhere. Anyway, Paula, John, and I were all outside trying to get Lucy to come to us to get the bone from her. I had her very favorite treat of all time, and even that didn't get her to come to me. So we escalated to chasing. The three of us -- grown adults, mind you -- were chasing her around our yards (the gate was open so she was back and forth between the yards) for a good 20 minutes or more. We had her cornered about three times where she'd gone behind our line of pine trees and between the tree, the fence behind the tree, and three of us surrounding any way out, she still managed to get away! She made us look like fools -- LIKE FOOLS! I think we would have done well to take a time out to regroup, plan it out, maybe get out the ol' 'Risk' board game to try to strategize our attack, but these ideas are always clearer in hindsight. ;-)

So we finally get the bone away from her and throw it out, and we stand around and chat for five minutes and what do you know -- Macy trots up with a bloody rawhide hanging out of her mouth! We think Lucy must have buried what was left of the bone from last weekend somewhere in our yard and Macy uncovered it. John and Paula had to chase Macy round for a little while to get it off of her, while I held a squirming and whining Lucy back. John and I felt a little better that Macy wouldn't give it up, either. Damn those dogs and their cleverness!