A dog used all his willpower to avoid eating a sausage left on the table in front of him—only for someone else to steal it from under his nose.
Marilyn Link, 29, lives in Apopka, Florida, with her adored three-year-old golden retriever, Donut, who she described to Newsweek as “very food motivated.”
“He has very strong impulse control, and he knows if he does a command, he will always be rewarded with a high-value treat,” she explained. “We can drop anything, even cheese, on the ground in front of him, and 99 percent of the time he will leave it unless we tell him ‘okay, which is his release command!”
Link decided to test Donut’s skills with a series of challenges to showcase how good he was at following the wait command—but as a video to his TikTok account, @the_goldendonut, proves, things went slightly awry.
In the video, originally shared on July 15, 2025, Link places a hot dog in a bun in front of Donut, and leaves him alone with it. And, dutifully, Donut doesn’t move—and in fact avoids looking at the hot dog completely, as though to assist with his willpower.
She wrote over the video that he’s “such a good boy and made the smart decision to avoid eye contact with the hot dog”—though his eyes occasionally flick toward it, as though making sure it’s still there.
Then, all of a sudden, a cat’s head pokes up from underneath the table beside Donut, and starts sniffing at the food.
As Donut looks towards the door as though asking if anyone else is seeing this, the cat jumps onto the table, grabs the sausage in her mouth, and flees—while Donut watches on, a sad expression on his face.
The camera then captures Link’s reflection in the window, as she rushes over to see what happened, “in utter disbelief.”
She wrote in the caption: “I knew Donut wouldn’t touch it, but this was definitely not what I expected. And no the cat didn’t eat the hot dog, we ran downstairs and grabbed it from her mouth!”
TikTok users loved it, awarding the video more than 74,000 likes, as one commentator pointed out “you never told the cat to leave it,” but admitted “you would have been just wasting your breath.”
“Donut watching her take it and thinking he’s gonna get the blame,” another said, while one willed: “I hope that good boy still got a hot dog after watching that.”
Link confirmed to Newsweek that Donut “definitely got rewarded for being such a good boy.”
“We know he has a really strong ‘wait’ and ‘leave it’ command, so I was confident he wouldn’t touch it,” Link said.
She explained that they were “actually watching from upstairs in a spot Donut and Apples, the cat, couldn’t see us, so we witnessed it happening!
“Once she actually grabbed the hot dog we ran downstairs to take it from her.”
Golden retrievers have long been a popular choice as a family pet, with the American Kennel Club noting the breed’s intelligent, friendly and devoted nature. Retrievers are excellent at obedience training, and are often chosen as a working breed, such as guide dogs for the blind.
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