Food science

Vince, the blacksmith, came today to shoe the horses. Knowing the crowd he would encounter, he brought a 20 pound bag of dog treats (1.429 stone), each about the size of Eric. "Horse hooves and dog treats - it doesn't get much better than that" - I think Nigella Lawson first made that observation. In any case, we had to flag Eric (and Fin) after half a dozen treats and who knows how many hooves.

Later, in the interest of science but still on the subject of food, we did an experiment. We measured the width of both dogs' tongues (Fin: 5.378 inches (13.66 centimeters); Eric: 0.275 inches (0.699 centimeters)). Fin's is 19.556 times as wide as Eric's. Then, we gave each a yogurt container to lick. Elapsed time for each: Fin, 4.875 seconds; Eric, 23 minutes and 17 seconds. Based on tongue width alone, one would conclude that Eric should have finished in 95.3 seconds. Hence, Eric is 14.6 times as thorough as Fin.