Ice Cream Truck Ice Cream

This is my dog Aquinnah.  She is a lover of fetching, hunting pieces of pizza crusts and bagels off the street.  She loves the ocean, running in the sand, chewing on bones and hanging out (as shown in bed above).  Above all other things she loves the ice cream truck man.  I made the mistake of accepting a "doggie cone" from Mr. Softie in the beginning of the summer... all this means is they give me a free adult size vanilla ice cream cone for Aquinnah.

Normally, I am neurotically careful about the food that I give her (the things she finds on the street is another story).  But I thought it was so cute that she would daintily take bites and lick the ice cream cone that I caved into those hazel brown eyes and started giving her cones.

Well, I've created a monster.  Aquinnah is smart enough that she has has circuit in the neighborhood  of restaurants and stores that gives her treats: Petopia, High Vibe, Bikes by George and Il Bagatto.  She sits in front of the doors of these establishments and won't budge until she's given a treat.  Literally, won't move, and if I try and pull her, she lays down on her stomach and defiantly stares at me until someone takes pity on her and gives her a handful of cookies.  This works for me, because I know what streets to avoid if I'm in a hurry and walking her.  The ice cream truck is another story.  Aquinnah stops for ANY truck that is similarly shaped (UPS, FedEx, Post Office) and stares at the trucks in her best "I'm well-behaved pose" and waits as I attempt to drag her away and rationalize with her that the post man doesn't hide ice cream in his truck.  Worse than stopping for all similarly shaped trucks is what happens when we hear the ice cream truck music from blocks away.

Her reaction is as I would imagine would happen if all at once 400 tennis balls got shot into a park and she didn't know which way to run first.  Upon hearing the music, she stops. Her whole body begins quivering and she starts jolting in every direction.  People walking down the street look at me like I have a schizophrenic dog who is totally and completely unruly.  Usually she is able to hunt down the truck, plow women and children out of the way and sit "patiently" under the window, drool hanging out of her mouth barely holding herself back from hurling her little blonde body 4 feet into the air in an attempt to physically get into the truck.  Luckily, there are two ice cream people in our neighborhood both of whom love her and give her 1-3 cones depending on how pathetic she acts.

As her ice cream crack habit has developed, she no longer daintily licks and takes bites of the cones as she once did.  She sucks the ice cream out in one bite and frantically eats the cone.  I don't know what they put in their ice cream, I would imagine it's more than cream, sugar, and vanilla... maybe there is some dog crack in there too.  But summer walks in the city have become a mine-field of avoiding the inevitable ice cream truck.  And the lowest I have come is having to physically pick her up (all 55 lbs.) and remove her from the trucks after her allotted and VERY generous 3 cone max is up.