Chip doesn’t feel great

SUMMARY: Chip is not feeling well. Off to the vets we go. It’s one of those weeks.

Backfill: Posted partial on Facebook June 15; added here July 3

Appetite dropped way off suddenly on Friday. Now it’s Monday and worse. Even though Human Mom has been trying to feed him an attractive but bland diet.

Da heck, Human Mom, whut dis nasty whites you is hide da chicken yums in?

Side note– my comment on FB about what could be going on: Maybe too many plums. That is my working theory. And I’m thinking that it’s not an issue with the plums themselves, but with the salicylates that they contain, because that can trigger pancreatitis in a dog who’s already had an episode. I learned that this morning online (It almost seemed like the pancreatitis acting up, but he has been on a low-fat diet, and I haven’t been giving him anything other than that, so I looked up what could trigger pancreatitis, and it listed the 10 most common things, one of which was salicylates, and I said, a-ha!), but we will check with the vet to see what’s up.

Gotcha Days and Birthdays

SUMMARY: Excuses for taco dinners

Started in an email discussion with an acquaintance today

I don’t recall when I first heard about Gotcha Days. I tend to celebrate my dogs’ birthday milestones (even if they’re just guesses) rather than the Gotchas, because that’s what my family has always done. Might feel differently if I had been adopted!

BUT sometimes I do celebrate them. And there are lots of opportunities coming up for something other than the normal kibble.

For their normal kibble, if I give them significant food other than that, I mostly eyeball it to reduce how much kibble they get that day. That has worked fine for Chip but Zorro for a while, but “suddenly” Zorro put on 3 lbs (that’s 10% weight gain!) over the last year or so and so now I’m futzing with what kibble he gets to try to reduce that. If only he weren’t self-supplementing with the occasional lizard, rat, or squirrel. That’s hard to account for, since I likely don’t see him do it most of the time, and he won’t write it down in his food log.

If I had been healthier and he had been more cooperative, I’d have just taken him for longer walks and thrown a frisbee for him more times a day. But, oh, well. I don’t think he’s ever even seen a frisbee being thrown. And he’ll fetch a toy in the yard only a few times before he quits. That’s on me, for not being more persistent and interacting with him more over the years. It’s just been my persistent lack of motivation.

BUT — that aside, they do still get occasional special dinners!

Zorro’s Gotcha Day (his 5th) isn’t until early June; Chip’s is at the end of this month (his 6th). Then they have birthdays in May and June, too. Lots of imminent occasions for tacos for dinner. Or whatever. And no kibble for dinner that day.

Sometimes it’s MacD, and I order a hamburger with no sauce or ketchup, no onions. But I like crunchy tacos from Taco Bell, so that’s what we do most often. I can hardly wait!

From Christmas 2015

Once when Tika and Boost got hamburgers

Related:

Zorro’s 4th Gotcha Day

… well, can’t find other posts that I thought I had. You’re welcome to search my blog yourself for whatever terms you want! (Hamburger, taco…)

Tika the Very Naughty Nose Wizard

SUMMARY: She loved food. Even on the agility course.

This is expanded version of a Facebook post Mar 2, 2020.

P.S. Food is not allowed on the agility course in most cases!

Tika was an absolute food hog. We were competing at the Masters level in USDAA–already had Silver Championship and Platinum Tournament Master–and one day, we were flying around a course with her way ahead of me as usual, when she suddenly skidded to a halt, veered off in an entirely different direction, completely ignored my attempts to get her attention, trotted about 40 feet away from where we had been to the edge of the ring, and nosed a tiny piece of some kind of food out of the grass! Then turned, blasted back to me, and continued full speed with what we had been doing. Seriously, how can a dog detect that tiny a piece of food, at that distance, at that speed, doing something that you’d think requires a lot of attention to avoid killing yourself??

But she wouldn’t eat bananas.**

(BTW: It was Steeplechase. Qualified and came in 2nd. Crazy dog; how she managed with all that wasted time, who knows!)

—–

** By contrast, Jake would tear things apart and escape from his crate to get a banana.

Terminology for non-agilityers–

Qualifying (Q): Meeting the requirements for the class/run (time and faults or points) to earn a “leg” towards eventual titles.
Silver Championship: Earning enough Qs to achieve multiple championships.
Tournament Platinum: Means she was really good at qualifying (had earned many Qs) for the often-challenging three classes that are eventually featured at the national championships. At the time, that was the highest title you could earn for collecting Tournament Qs.
Steeplechase: Designed to be very fast. It’s often the hardest of the Tournament classes to earn Qs in, because so many dogs are so very fast and, to Q, you must be in the top 15% of the dogs running that course. (This is a simplification, but close enough.)

Photo by Sarah Hitzeman

It’s Polish Sandwich time, baby!

SUMMARY: Plus hamburgers for the boys.

It was a sudden urge. I hit Wienerschnitzel maybe once or twice a year, and Me Love Polish Sandwich. Nom nom.

I bought hamburgers for the boys. Plain hamburgers. No cheese. No sauce. Explicitly with nothing but lettuce, tomato, and onion. No sauce, no cheese. Cashier almost got it right.

Hmmm, there seems to be more than “only” on these “plain hamburgers”. Dogs will just have to suffer with some bonus cheese.

The Head Chef prepares the repast according to the demands of the clients’ dishes… the famous Mazes.

Plus, all those veggies? That’s a side salad for me, not them! Ha ha!

Live action animals feeding in their natural habitat, a National Geographic presentation:

Nom nom time!

And for Human Mom: The big prize! More nom noms occur.

Breakfast

SUMMARY: A new possibly Pulitzer Prize winning poem

[I posted originally on facebook]

Breakfast

Chip’s dish is green,
Mom get caffeine,
Zorro eats some
Grass and plums
And everything’s serene.

*well, dish is more like teal. But whatever.

He’s Three Toes This Week!

SUMMARY: Zorro turns three.

Dinner. The Best Time! Except for everything else, which are also The Best Time! Such a happy, eager guy.

Applesauce

SUMMARY: Human Mom Actually Cooked

I’ve actually cooked so seldom in recent years, that this was a landmark event. Cooked for my company’s holiday party the other weekend. (Yes, really. Holiday party.) This was my first cookbook and my mom’s first cookbook. And this might have been the first recipe I ever cooked from. Have made it many times since then. Pretty simple, particularly if you have a Foley Food Mill, which I got years ago specifically for making applesauce!

Side note: Discovered that Chip either doesn’t like apples or maybe it’s the cloves. Wouldn’t lick the dish afterwards. Zorro, however, took up the slack. (No photos of that part, sorry.)

Jackpot!

SUMMARY: Wordless Wednesday (mostly)

(What the following animations are missing is the Slam! Slam! Slam! of the paws whacking the lever to dispense the food and the lever springing back into position immediately. The sound is left as an exercise for the student.)

>> Visit the Wordless Wednesday site; lots of blogs. <<

Kibble Song

SUMMARY: Just some positive and some silly lyrics in a difficult month.

OK, think Annie Get Your Gun:

Got no mansion, got no yacht,
Still I’m happy with what I got.
I’ve got the sun in the morning
And the moon at night

Got the tune? (If not, try this.) The song itself is something I’m singing to myself as an affirmation.

Still, once that’s in my head, it’s hard to avoid going here at mealtime–

I feed kibble to my dogs
I must keep them from being hogs:
They get a cup in the morning
And two thirds at night!

That’s all I got for ya.

Boost Today

SUMMARY: Life continues.

Boost has so far today eaten:

One whole jar of Gerber chicken & chicken gravy (basically chicken and cornstarch). Yay! (This was in half spoonfuls about 1-2 minutes apart, and the second half of the jar the same way a couple of hours after the first half.)
Two CharlieBears, about five minutes apart.
Half a container of Gerber chicken noodle goop. (All in one slow sitting, but then done with it.)
Ah! She just finished all but a spoonful of the chicken noodle goop! (9:40pm)

Today’s Boost activities:

Morning, still pretty zombieish, no eating, just standing standing standing.
An hour or two after her meds, played catch with her lattice toy (just standing there) and even some tug. (Although not super-tough tug)
An hour or so after that, some readyyyy…. annnnd…. go! kicking the ball in the yard. Kicking just a couple or few feet. She did it only a couple of times. Then stood in the shade while I did entertaining things with the ball for a while.
Napping, finally lying down a little after “breakfast” and a little early afternoon.
Sitting/standing and staring intently when I play with Chip. An old favorite. But now not so much footwork as she used to have.
Going for an hour ride in the car while I ran errands. She climbed into the front seat again on her own. Very droopy and maybe a little confused looking by the end (during the trip is when she ate the CharlieBears)
Around 6:30, went into the yard and played ready-and-go again for a long, long time. Same strategy as before: I kick it, she zooms to grab it, then stands there. Every few little tiny zooms, i pull some weeds or work on the irrigation problems to let her catch her breath. She does not lie down. I finally go inside as it starts getting dark.
Pretty much napping since then (it’s now closing in on 9:30).

Had to put her morning pills down her throat. That video I found when I need to do it for Tika was very easy to follow for Tika–push thumb between teeth and against the roof of the mouth and she’ll open her mouth. Worked like a charm.

For Boost, not so much: Can’t force thumb between teeth without a big battle. Finally get it through and press against roof of mouth: Teeth continue to press hard on thumb. Erg. Finally she does open her mouth slightly, and I can barely get the pills down–Tika seemed to have a much wider area in which to get the pills over the back of her tongue; Boost’s is narrow. A real challenge.

I bought a bag of Pill Pockets to try with her, but of course she’s eating so very little (or nothing) that it’s foolish to expect that she would actually eat the pill pockets. Doh.

Tomorrow, more of the same? How can I leave her to go to work when she’s feeling at her worst? Or when she eats food so slowly and needs to be fed every hour or maybe two? When she’s feeling better for those precious small times when she can play?

I am so glad that I canceled the appointment for this afternoon. A few hours of OKness is worth so much to me and, I hope, to her.

I have so many friends, from casual agility friends to deep,long-term friends, from heavily dog-people to not-dog people, who are being so supportive through these rough times. At the moment, must mention:

Sarah photographer friend came over Sunday to take some photos of me and Boost
The Other Ellen agility friend came over yesterday to try to tempt boost into eating–brought pizza and special ice cream and other stuff–and to take more photos.