<P> The Dog and its Reflection (or' Shadow' in several translations) is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 133 in the Perry Index . An indication of how old and well - known this story was is given by an allusion to it in the work of the philosopher Democritus from the 5th century BCE . Discussing the foolish desire for more, rather than being content with what one has, he describes it as being' like the dog in Aesop's fable .' </P> <P> In 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' . </P> <P> The story's moral, according to John Lydgate's versified Isopes Fabules, is that the one' Who all coveteth, oft he loseth all .' Making use of a picture of the fable in his Book of Emblemes (1586), the poet Geoffrey Whitney gives his moral lesson the Latin title Mediocribus utere partis (Make use of moderate possessions): </P>

The story of the dog and the bone