The doggie is in deep doo-doo. She is grounded and I’m restricting her computer privileges. You see, she learned something new.
Luckily, some people have commented that they like the last few posts where Mom interacts a little more. I know you all love Sammie and love hearing the horrors of how her diet affects her daily life directly from her; but since she’s grounded, I think I’m going to write a post for her blog, just this once. She loves you all and she is worried about her public missing her. See, I’m not THAT mean!
Do y’all want to know why she’s grounded? I know you can see she broke the litter box–cheating on her diet and eating the litter! It’s not entirely her fault. It all started when she got a kidney infection. Of course, it was on a weekend and we had to go to the emergency vet. Any pet owner knows they ALWAYS manage to get sick when the regular vet isn’t in.
We ran the standard blood tests and urinalysis and they found a whole lot of protein and elevated kidney values. She got antibiotics for the infection, both pills and a bottle of topical, which I affectionately termed her “pussy powder” and she got over her infection.
We went back to her regular vet for another round of blood work to check those kidney values again, hoping they were only elevated due to the infection. But they weren’t. She is in the beginning stages of kidney failure.
We had to take a look at her diet. I decided to try some of the specially formulated kidney diet food from the vet. All things in moderation, right? I figured if we replaced one meal a day with the prescription food, it would take some strain off her kidneys and it wouldn’t destroy the progress she has made. Life is about making the necessary adjustments for the hand you’re dealt–and so is dieting. You can’t be so regimented about it that you feel like you’ll fail if you deviate from the meal plan even once. Things come up. Cat food gets stolen. Sometimes from both ends of the cat.
So we tried the prescription food for her evening meal for a while. I visit with my parents in the evenings, meaning Samantha Rose is left to her own devices after this meal. I block the cat food or put it out of her reach when I’m not around and that worked out most of the time. Until the appetite stimulant started to work in the prescription food. Note to self: read the packaging. There’s an appetite stimulant in the prescription kidney diet food.
Now Miss Samantha Rose is hungrier and there is cat food out and about in the house. And Samantha is a rottweiler. Rottweilers are smart, if you didn’t know.
Samantha has realized she is not as fat as she used to be. And I have realized that my barriers to the cat food and litter were based on Sammie’s diminished physical abilities due to her girth.
One of the barriers I used was the bed. Sadly, she can’t walk up steps and she couldn’t jump up on the bed anymore. Now Sammie has learned she can finally get her fat butt up on the bed again. And also down the other side, where I had set up cat food and litter boxes quite openly for the cats since the dog couldn’t get to them.
She stole 3 plates of canned cat food, 2 bowls of dry cat food and helped herself to some yummy kitty litter contents while she was at it.
She now waits for me to leave so she can make her rounds to see which obstacles she can get through on her vigorously renewed search for cat food. Only after the meal with the appetite stimulants.
We have learned that this food defeats us on two levels. It makes Sammie hungrier so she searches out more food wrecking her diet; and she finds cat food, which has more protein in it than dog food, so it defeats the purpose of the lower protein food in the first place. We have to adjust her food again. That’s what you do. You make adjustments and you don’t sweat the minor screw-ups. Especially with a dog on a diet. S*** happens, sometimes it gets eaten. You just do better the next day.
You can bet we will be readjusting Sammie’s diet, searching for a food that is lower in protein for some of her meals, and keeping the food she is eating for others. It’s all trial and error. This week we had an error.
There is a plus side to this error though. My Sammie has figured out that she has lost enough weight to allow her to get up on the bed again! 😀 <3
