The Inspector's Dog and the Cheddar
At a port, a sniffing dog fell in love with a pallet of my cheddar and refused to leave, and the whole dock went on a very long coffee break.
I do not usually go to the port. I send the pallets and the paperwork and the paperwork goes ahead of the pallets, which is a sad thing to say about cheese. But in the spring of one year I flew down to see a container loaded in person, since the buyer was important and I wanted to shake a hand.
The container stood open on the dock, and a customs officer walked up with a brown and white beagle on a leash. The dog's name was Radar, which I gathered from the tag on her vest. She was a professional. She walked along the pallets with her nose to the floor, and everything was going well until she reached the sixth pallet, my pallet, my twenty-pound blocks of sharp cheddar.
She sat down. Then she looked at her handler. Then she looked at the cheese. Then she lay down on her belly and refused to move. The officer said, "Come on, Radar." Radar did not come on. She put her chin on the edge of the pallet and sighed like a person in a diner who has found the right pie.
For about forty minutes the officer tried every trick. He used a whistle. He used a treat. He used a voice I have only heard from fathers. Radar stayed put. The whole dock gathered to watch. A forklift driver brought a folding chair. Someone started a pot of coffee. At some point I realized I was sitting on a crate eating a sandwich, in perfect harmony with the Customs service.
The officer finally cleared the pallet, apologizing the whole time, and I thought it was fine. I offered Radar a small piece of cheddar. The officer said he could not accept anything on her behalf, and then looked away while I put it on the floor. She ate it in one bite. I later read about the U.S. Customs and Border Protection rules and found no rule on cheese bribery. The story went up on farm.FM.