Bao and I both love food.

But (like French women who don't get fat) I like to take the time to savor and enjoy whatever I'm eating, especially when it's something I love -- like Maine lobster doused with melted butter, or chocolate cheesecake. I take little, tiny bites and concentrate on how delicious each mouthful tastes.

Not Bao. Paradoxically, the more he likes whatever he's eating, the faster he eats it. Last night, I cut the fatty part from the steak I'd just grilled into little chunks and offered them to Bao, one by one, not because I was being mean but because I wanted to make the treat last longer. Bao wasn't having any of that, thank you! He gulped each morsel down so fast I don't think he even had time to taste it.

The only things Bao eats slowly are things he doesn't like and eventually spits out. Mashed sweet potato and peas, for instance. That's supposed to be good for dogs. So I cooked up a batch and shaped it into little faux meat-balls. Bao daintily took one tiny little meat-ball into his mouth, chewed a couple of times, looked up at me, rolled his eyes and spat it out. But it had spent more time in his mouth than all the pieces of steak put together.

Maybe dogs don't have taste buds. Or maybe they only have negative taste buds, for things they don't like. There's a doctoral dissertation in here, somewhere.