The day I found the Kinder Bueno mini and did not get to keep it

Mom said we were just going in for one thing. That is never true. Never once has that been true.

We were somewhere big. Lots of aisles, lots of red signs, a floor that echoed when I walked on it. I was doing my job, which is carrying things, when I found it. A bag. White and blue and orange. It smelled like chocolate and something sweet and creamy underneath that. I picked it up before Mom could say leave it.

She didn't say leave it. She just looked at me holding it and laughed and got her phone out. I stood very still so she could get the picture. This is a thing I have learned. If you hold still, Mom takes longer to take the thing away.

The bag said Kinder Bueno Mini on it. I don't know what Bueno means. I know Kinder because it's on a lot of things Mom keeps on the top shelf where I can't reach. I have never gotten to eat one. Not once. This was going to be my chance, standing right there by the curtain wall thing near the escalators, bag in my mouth, Mom laughing at me.

Then we went up the escalator stairs, the moving kind, and I was still holding it. I was so close. I could feel it getting a little squished in my mouth from how excited I was. There's a picture of that too, me on the metal stairs with the whole store below us, still holding on.

She took it away at the top. Just like that. Said something about chocolate being bad for dogs. I know this now. Mom has told me before, more than once, and I still forget every single time I smell it. Chocolate is one of those things I'm not allowed to have, ever, no matter how good the bag smells. She gave me a regular treat instead. It was fine. It was not a Kinder Bueno Mini.

We didn't buy the chocolate. Mom put it back on a shelf near the checkout line where the water bottles were stacked up really high. I looked at it the whole time we walked away. I'm still thinking about it a little.

Anyway. We got water and I got to carry the bag home, the regular one, not the chocolate one. That part was good. There were people everywhere and a kid dropped part of a hot dog near the escalator and I saw it happen from very far away and made a mental note.

If you're a dog and you find chocolate on a shelf, I'm told the right thing to do is let Mom see it and not eat it, even if it smells incredible. I did the first part. Four paws out of five, because I never actually got to try it, and honestly, I think about that bag more than I should.