Doggie doughnuts

The other day, I started my very first diet, completely by accident. A lot of people talk about how tough it is to start a diet, but I just developed a simple method that seems to work pretty well. The first step is to order the two cheeseburger extra value meal. When you sit down with your tray, if you notice that they’ve accidentally given you two hamburgers instead of two cheeseburgers, don’t get back up and complain. Just eat everything edible on your tray. Voila. Diet started, and finished. I completed this diet recently, and I feel healthier already. If they get your order right, though, you’ll have to start your diet some other day. You can also create an international variation to the diet if they forget to put sour cream on your tacos.

Sometimes I also diet by holding a slice of pepperoni pizza by the crust and letting the grease drip onto the plate. The more you let the grease drip, the healthier the pizza becomes. If you let the pizza drip for more than a minute, it’s the same as eating a rice cake.

I’m a much better dieter than the old golden retriever my family had when I was kid. Ginger, who had always been a pretty hefty dog, got enormous one summer. Corporate sponsors started trying to fly her over sports stadiums. People in wetsuits tried to surf on her in front of crowds, but Ginger wasn’t a big fan of the dead herrings.

Perplexed by her sudden weight gain, my parents tried everything to get the old dog out to exercise more. Then they started feeding her Science Diet. Then they continually cut back the portions, but nothing seemed to be working. Ginger just kept getting fatter.

My buddy Mark and I tried to help the situation by dressing Ginger up in Dad’s wristbands, Nike T-shirt and running shorts and putting a dog biscuit at the base of the treadmill, which was cranked up to jogging speed. Ginger would run along on the treadmill, trying desperately to grab the dog biscuit with her mouth. I’m not sure it did much for her fatness, but the “Gingercise” tape by the TV in the basement has provided entertainment for over a decade now.

One day, Dad decided to surreptitiously follow Ginger around on her wanderings. This was back in the days when dogs just roamed free around neighborhoods, without any high-voltage equipment strapped to their necks. We knew all the dogs in the neighborhood, and everyone knew ours. Dogs were like caribou, wandering the suburban plains. This was also, I believe, before carrying dog droppings around in one’s pocket became fashionable. Sometime around the mid-90s, plastic baggie manufacturers figured out a way to make carrying dog doo around a stylish thing to do. Nowadays, people can’t wait to get their hands on the stuff, which is probably why there hasn’t been a Ginger V2.0.

Anyway, Dad noticed that Ginger’s route always seemed to include going through the woods, up to the back neighbor’s house. When he followed her up there, he stood amazed as he watched Ginger walk up to a huge mound of doughnuts and scarf down three or four with each bite. Chocolate, glazed, powdered, jelly – for that entire summer, Ginger had been eating a buffet of doughnuts, in addition to her Science Diet.

The neighbor lady worked at Wawa, and every day, they had a pile of stale Dunkin’ Donuts to throw out. Rather than letting them go to waste, she’d bag them up and dump them in her backyard, because, for some reason, she wanted to feed Boston crèmes and frosted bear claws to the raccoons. Probably because they needed something to go with their double espressos.

You can follow Mike Todd around with a plastic baggie in your pocket online at mikectodd@gmail.com.