Sorry About That, Chief

Maxwell Smart, the famous Agent 86, used to say that with regularity to his boss, called simply the Chief. Indeed it became one of the Max's catch phrases. Yet it seems appropriate to me and my family.

We had a beagle named Chief. We had that dog for about 12 years. He was a good, family dog.

Trying to encourage our kids to eat healthy as they grew, we tried to keep a lot of fruit around the house. Apples had kind of defaulted to the fruit of choice; they were plentiful and cheap. 

Over time, who knows how such things start, old Chief began to follow an apple eater around the house. We all took to tossing him the apple core when we were done. Chief would typically catch it in the air and chomp it down in a few bites.

It turns out (we discovered this relatively recently) that the seeds in apple cores contain trace amounts of cyanide. I don't think it had any serious long term health effects on the old family pet. Further, how could we have ever imagined such stuff as that? Still, I think about it from time to time now and feel bad about it.

Sorry about that, Chief. But we all thought at the time, including you, that it simply a nice treat.