“A countryman one day said to his little puppies, ‘Come into the parlor and enjoy yourselves, and pick up the bread-crumbs on the table; your mistress has gone out to pay some visits.'”

I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this fairy tale. First, it’s quite a short tale. And second, it contains puppy abuse and little else.

The puppies tell the countryman that if they go into the parlor for the bread-crumbs and their mistress finds out, they will be beaten. The countryman goads the puppies and goads them again, convincing them to take the bread-crumbs. Unfortunately, as the puppies jump up for the bread-crumbs, their mistress returns home and does exactly what the puppies predicted she would do.

“And when they were outside the house, the little dogs said to the countryman, ‘Do, do, do, do, do you see what happened?’ Then the countryman laughed and said, ‘Didn’t, didn’t, didn’t you expect it?’ So they just had to run away.”

My guess at the lessons here include: don’t give in to goading or suggestions when it comes to something you know you shouldn’t do. And if you’re in a terrible living situation, sometimes all you can do is run away/leave. At least the puppies had one another.