To keep a horribly itchy skin condition in check, the heeler Mom is on a daily dose of antibiotics and a bare minimum of prednisone. Each of the two pills has to be forced into her mouth, and then a dog biscuit quickly inserted to distract her from spitting out the pills.

Of course, if you give one heeler something to eat, you have to feed the other two as well, else disharmony will enter the pack. And you would have to endure the hateful stares of the unfed heelers for at least an hour or so. To maintain the mother's status in the pack, you have to make sure that not only does she eat first, but she also gets to eat last.

As a result, the wife forces in the pills with her fingers, feeds a biscuit to the mother, and then hands one each to the two sisters. Ending with a second, final biscuit to the mother.

This ritual occurs in the kitchen at night, at bedtime, and is known within the pack as "pill time."

Now, the prednisone has had the unfortunate, but expected, side effect of greatly increasing the heeler Mom's appetite. As in, she is always ravenously hungry. Patrolling the house looking for any stray scrap of food, untended candy wrapper, or bloody tissue in the trash. By bedtime she is desperate for her "pills." (We are certain the heelers think the biscuits are the things called "pills". Why the Alpha insists on shoving small round rocks into the mother's mouth before giving her the "pills" is beyond them, but the "pills" taste good, so who cares?)

The mother is desperately hungry enough that you best check the tips of your fingers after offering her each biscuit.

Well, the little maskless heeler has always been dainty, with the gentlest of bites when taking food from your fingers. Always politely waiting for food to be offered.

Until she fasted for four freezing days and nights out in the desert. Now she is like her mother, only more so. Patrolling the house for crumbs, snatching each bite of food like it might be her last, shoving her face into your plate, rather than waiting for you to finish.

You get the picture.

So, one of the first nights she was home, the wife began the usual pill time rituals. The little maskless heeler watched eagerly as her mother received the first biscuit, and dove in to snatch up the crumbs that fell from her mother's lips before they stopped rolling on the floor. After gulping down her own biscuit, the little starving heeler's face was inches from her mother's again, waiting for crumbs as the second biscuit was delivered.

And the mother, who obviously spends her entire day feeling starved herself...

Spit out the second biscuit.

And turned her head aside so her small daughter could have it.

It's some kind of instinct, I'm sure.

Really.

And a sunset from last September: