Upon my arrival home,

I am greeted by no dogs.

Uh-oh.

I whistle.

Zoey lifts her head from her cushion. I hear the unspoken, “Oh. It’s you.” Her head flops down.

Harley races in, skitters to a stop as his brakes hit the wood flooring, then flees in the other direction. I’m certain I heard his “Oh noes!” before he turned.

“Harley!”

The echo of the dog flap is his response.

I open the slider and step out. “Harley!”

His eyes turn shifty as he assesses the distance between me and the door. His contraband is between his teeth and as I lunge, he dodges sideways and back through the door.

I use my command voice–the one that means mess with me if you dare–and die. He spins to face me, head low.

“Give. Me. That. Potato.”

Nothing doing.

I grab on. “Release. Release. Release. Release…”

On the next syllable he lets go, a doggy grin spreading across his jowls. He darts for the kitchen. I juggle the slippery potato and tear after him.

We wrestle for the bag of potatoes that he has chewed through to extract his initial prey. After a frenzied tustle, I win.

The unmolested potatoes go in the pantry where they belong, the partially gnawed and slimy potato hits the sink, and Harley is crushed.

If he could have whined, “But Moooooooooooooooooom!” he would have.

Luckily, for my sanity, he lacked the forethought to spirit extra potatoes out of the bag and bury them about the house, because he was too busy thinking, “SCORE!!” Alas, I am certain he will remember that small detail the next time the Eldest Child or Spousling set a bag of delicious potatoes upon the floor for his edification.