Baxter Black: Uninformed human learns about canine cuisine

I was talking to Okie. He’s the farm dog. He doesn’t care to go out on the range with the cow dogs. His job is mostly guarding, barking and putting up a big front. He does it well. I found him under one of the trucks. He’d dug a little bed in the dirt. It was in the shade. He seemed to be pondering.
“So,” I asked, “what are ya thinking?”
“School,” he said, “maybe goin’ to college.”
This was a new one. He never seemed to be the studious kind.
“What would you major in?”
“Bones, I guess.”
“An anatomy student?” I questioned, “Archeologist? Musician? Witch doctor? Osteopath?”
“No, I was thinking about becoming a chef. Specialize in bones. You know, like Col. Sanders specialized in chicken, Wilford Brimley specialized in oatmeal, and Eve specialized in apples.”
“Have you ever cooked anything?” I asked.
“No, but I’ve eaten a lot of bones,” he said.
“That’s for sure,” I said, remembering the thousands of times a wide variety of carcass remnants were left tortured and mangled on the porch. “What kind of menu would you have? I mean, a bone is a bone, right?”
“Oh, you plebeian hominid,” he said, “Not to a bone connoisseur. That’s like saying a rope is a rope to a cowboy, or a dress is a dress to a bride, or all road kill is the same to a buzzard. When the only caviar you have ever eaten is that Powerball fluorescent fish bait, you have a very limited sense of the bountiful tastes that await you!”
“I guess you’re right,” I conceded, chastened by the breadth of his vision. “Do you actually have to cook the bone?”
“Not just cook the bone!” he said, looking down his nose at me, “It can be marinated, served au slime rosado, sliced into bone dollars, as ground bone burgers, served bone tartare with or without gristle and ligaments, as bone stew flavored by pieces of offal, hair and toenails, or simply wrapped in a tortilla á la bone burrito.”
“Wow!” I said. “I had no idea.”...

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