The Bone Marrow Metaphor

My Happy Corgi Turned into a Monster

It was Christmas Eve. I had just gotten home from grocery shopping. Since it was the holidays, I had bought for the corgi, Arthur, 5 years old, his favorite treat: bones with marrow. He was a terrific dog: happy, playful, obedient and curious.

Normally, I stop at Noah’s Ark for his marrow, a pet-food place that has grass fed bone marrow, but I was running late, so I purchased it from a grocery food chain.

I place the five bones down on a plate so he could sniff them and chose one. The others would be refrigerated for later in the week.

That was the way we do it around here on Closeburn Farm — dogs get to pick.

The cellphone rang, I got distracted, and when I turned around again, Arthur had eaten, sucked, devoured the marrow from all five bones. “Hey, Boy, you were fast to grab all your Christmas dinner in one bite.”

When I went to pick up the plate, he bared his teeth, and growled. He had never, ever done that.

I quickly snapped up the plate as he grabbed one of the five bones and ran off. What the heck had happened to Arthur? What had made him so aggressive and angry?

A quick internet search on my phone revealed that grocery store marrow most often contains the…