Dog Tale 8: William and the Wooden Bowl

One of William's long memories has to do not with food and taste but with smell. Years ago--I can't recall how many--there was a wooden bowl at Lili and Loo that William was obsessed with. It was displayed in the back room--the room that opens onto the garden. The bowl was African, and its scent, imperceptible to humans, was a siren call to William. Whenever we entered the store, William made a beeline for the bowl. Although I prevented him, he wanted to lick it, he wanted to take it in his mouth and carry it off, he wanted to gnaw on it and make it his own. I contemplated buying the bowl for him, but it seemed both too costly and too inappropriate to turn a handcrafted objet into a chew toy.

Eventually, the bowl disappeared from the store. I'm not sure what happened to it. Presumably someone bought it. But to this day, when William visits Lili and Loo, he insists on going to that back room to look for--or rather sniff for--the bowl.