The fable does not appear in any of the traditional collections of Aesop's Fables and is not attributed to him until Steinhöwel's "Esopus" (c. 1476). There it is titled "Of the envious dog" ("de cane invido") and illustrates a moral proposition: "People frequently begrudge something to others that they themselves cannot enjoy. Even though it does them no good, they won't let others have it." After the cattle that it hinders from eating remonstrate with it, Steinhöwel goes on to mention that "The same thing happened when a dog was holding a bone in his mouth: the dog couldn't chew on the bone that way, but no other dog was able to chew on it either."