A lip-smackin' St. Valentine's gift, and eye candy, too

I snuffled into Mom's grocery bag before she could unpack it, and pulled out a big, gorgeous bone from Castor & Pollux, via our favorite market, Tilly and Salvy's Bacon Street Farm.

So I received my Valentine gift early, but that just means I can be chewing on it while checking out the competition during Mondays's hound group at the Westminster Dog Show. Two new breeds are crowding the hound field this year: the Bluetick Coonhound and the Redbone Coonhound. My breed, of course, the venerable American Foxhound, first entered the field in 1877, the very first year the show was held.

Unfortunately, we have never won Best in Show. Hounds rarely do: remember the big to-do when Uno the Beagle won in 2008?

Perhaps it has something to do with my breed's lack of affinity for grooming (see my recent piece on pedicures). Certainly it has nothing to do with our natural beauty. I cannot predict, alas, a BIS (the au courant know that's Westminster shorthand for Best in Show) this year, but were I a candidate, things surely would be different.