Treat Arbitrage
Kim and I spend a lot of time commenting to each other about Betty. Try as we might, we are not fully able to understand what floats Betty’s boat other than the immediate gratification of as much food as she can possibly eat. Indeed, there seem to be no limits to how much she thinks she can eat and is apparently stuck in that mindset of deprivation which probably defined most of her life on the streets. She espouses the philosophy that if food is even remotely likely to be available, she wants it and will do whatever it takes to consume it. There is literally no connection with need for nourishment or amount of food in her belly from what we can see. She is like one of those seagulls that doesn’t know when to stop eating and eats themselves to their death. I suspect that if Betty had to pick a way to die, that would be her preferred method of demise.
I grew up thinking that dogs got fed once per day in the evening. Somewhere along the way that has changed and dogs are now supposed to be fed at least twice per day, preferably twelve hours apart. Betty needs two insulin shots per day and they prefer it occur when she has a full stomach. When we got her she was to get 2.5 units of insulin per shot and is now up to 9 units. I think that is a combination of three things. She has put on weight from fourteen to twenty pounds (we think her fighting weight should be 17-18 pounds). Higher weight requires more insulin. She also is getting older, so its logical that going from age thirteen to fourteen+ would see some advancement of a metabolic disease like diabetes. And then there is the nature of the food she now eats. When we got her she was on a strict foster care diet of dry kibble. She now gets a combination of special formula canned dog food and specially-cooked food like ground turkey, fish and hamburger. While its safe to say that she likes this food far better than the old dry kibble, she is always looking to improve on it. She is a consummate beggar for food, which is due to her history and some weakness on our part (especially mine) in feeding her table scraps. I am unlikely these days to be able to finish whatever I sit down to eat and that means there is plenty to use for Betty. Also, Kim has gotten into the habit of giving Betty treats when she wants her to behave. That means she gets treats for getting her twelve eye drop doses per day. She also gets them for her two insulin shots and then again for accommodating Coleen by taking walks with her and using those walks to defecate. In addition to that, when we leave Betty alone for a few hours she is fine, but needs to be initially distracted by us giving her a treat to focus on while we shut the door and leave.
Betty is no stranger to treats of all sorts by now. There are the ever-popular turkey tendons that are like rawhide chew strips that keep her amused and satisfied for a long period of time. We also have dried chicken sausages that looked like desiccated mini hot dogs. Those are sort of one gulp treats where the tendons take a few minutes to gnaw. Lately, Kim has been getting these special treats made from beef and turkey hearts. These actually look like slightly dried-out body parts that are ever-s0-slightly moist and kind of gross to the touch. Kim tells me that I should wash my hands after handling them, a warning unlike any of the rest of the treats, so I imagine they are more organic and therefore more likely to carry germs or parasites or some such thing. The one thing I know for sure is that Betty likes those treats more than any of the other treats, but they are not so fun to dispense. If I were to measure treat consumption, I think it is likely that Betty is getting almost two extra meals per day into her diet, so its fair to say that this dog is well-fed by any standard.
One of the things that amazes me is that Betty has gradually gone from gobbling up her breakfast or dinner with great gusto to, now, casually nibbling on it, walking away from it and then finally returning to either finish it or be done with it at less than full consumption. If this was kibble I could understand it. If it was just medically balanced canned dog food, maybe I could even understand that. But it is mostly a blend of that and some really good stuff ranging from ground meat to steak to fish (both left over from some recent restaurants outing). This is the same stuff she would get as table scraps and that she begs for every day, but she will leave it in the bowl in order to come and beg directly for whatever I have on my plate. It’s totally illogical and I could even see it if she figured a beg now makes it worthwhile to keep the bowl (which she knows will always be there) for later. That seems to me to be a food strategy that goes well beyond limitless appetite and borders on obsession and psychological deprivation.
This afternoon I saw Betty take one of her favorite treats, a chicken strip, bring it into the living room to her favorite spot and deposit it on the rug. She then went back into the kitchen to see if there was more forthcoming from Kim. She reminded me of the child who gathers up all the toys to the point where they cannot play with and enjoy them, but just wants to possess them. Eventually she wandered back into the living room when nothing else was on offer in the kitchen, but then she had a hard time finding the treat given that her eyesight is blurry at best despite the surgery and all the eye drops every day. Eventually she lands on it and is off to the races with it, but the outcome was not entirely clear for a while.
Lately, Betty has taken to growling when she wants food. This is a particularly unattractive tendency which I think stems from her training (for whatever reason) to not bark unless absolutely necessary. She has no way of communicating other than to growl and she knows that it draws attention. It is her way of asking for more food or a treat. She has no sense that it might work contrary to her best interests by annoying us into NOT giving her a treat we might otherwise have given her. She particularly growls at me from the floor when I am at the table, but she has also started growling at Kim regardless of the fact that she is technically biting the hand that feeds her and Kim is particularly not amused by it.
I am preparing my ethics course for next semester and am reading several texts to guide me in developing the lesson plan. The first one is called Something for Nothing: Arbitrage and Ethics on Wall Street, and the other is called Enough: True Measures of Money, Business and Life. The titles tell you a great deal about the subject matter. One is about how to take things from the system because they are there for the taking. The second is clearly about excess and the ethics of when to stop taking. I’m enjoying preparing for the course, but I must admit that the analogies to Betty and her ways are jumping out at me. I think what it reminds me is that nature is not about ethics, it is about getting whatever you can get and keep at it until you can no longer get more, whether you need it or not and regardless of who else has none. Grace is about the ethics that man’s cerebellum has enabled him to possess and layer on top of his natural instincts. The conscience is said to reside in the Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex, which is the area that exhibits control over the pure motor functions and re-orients attention to perceptual events that occur outside the current focus of attention. That sounds like something Betty is incapable of doing. But since she can do simple treat arbitrage, I will posit that arbitrage (like my hedge fund buddies do every day) is a function without conscience or involvement of the Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex. I think I am now beginning to understand both Betty and Hedge Funds.