n the story, a dog that is carrying a stolen bone, or piece of meat or cheese, looks down as it is crossing a stream and sees its own reflection in the water. Taking it for another dog carrying something better, it opens its mouth to bark at the "other" and in doing so drops what it was carrying. The story became incorporated into mediaeval animal lore. The Aberdeen Bestiary, written and illuminated in England around 1200, asserts that 'If a dog swims across a river carrying a piece of meat or anything of that sort in its mouth, and sees its shadow, it opens its mouth and in hastening to seize the other piece of meat, it loses the one it was carrying