Dear friends,
Guess what? I am feeling well enough to be a little outraged about things that I am reading and hearing about and even over some things that I am experiencing lately. I guess that's a good sign, when you start to get fussy and pissy about little things again, right? Like all these meds my Mom is still making me take. I don't have to take any pills for nausea or to protect my intestines anymore and I only get my fluids every other day now, but I still have to take some medicines to help my kidneys work better and my thyroid pill and the pill to help my joints feel better. And my herbal remedy that Mom made for me. But it's not so bad, and I feel so good now that four days ago I ate Hebert's food instead of my own. And then I jumped up on a chair and onto the kitchen table and ate all the cat's food. Mom hasn't been careful about pushing in the kitchen chairs anymore, because she thought that I couldn't do that anymore - I guess I showed her! And then I jumped down and went outside and growled Canuke away from his bowl and ate all of HIS food. So now Mom says I can go back on my raw diet, and she isn't going to buy me special foods anymore. I will miss that roast chicken from Jewel.....
But I have something to tell you about being sick and eating special foods. It is a good thing to have some special foods on hand for when you are not feeling well, because it is very important to eat and keep your strength up when you are sick. And it is hard to believe, I know, but sometimes our owners are kinda dumb about picking out good things for us to eat when we are feeling bad and sick to our stomachs. They forget that we like food combinations that might not taste good to them and so they are always wanting to feed us really bland icky tasting stuff when we are sick. They forget that what we need is something that tastes good enough that we will want to eat it! And when we are sick, it better smell really nice and it better be warmed up so it smells strong and is easy on our stomach. While I was so sick all of July and August, I got lots of good ideas sent to me about things I might like to eat from many of you and I did like some of them. And Mom would never have thought of some of them. So I am going to give you this list, and I want you to show it to your owner and make sure they buy some of these things for you if you ever get sick like I did.
Mom says I have to stop here and tell you a disclosure first. A disclosure is something you say to cover your butt so that all of your owners are clear that what I am telling you is for general information and is not medical advice (DUH, I'm a DOG, not a VET!). She says that I have to say that they should check with their own vet first and they should be sensible about how much of any of these things they give you. If you have a really dopey owner, make sure he doesn't buy ALL of these things and feed them to you all at once and make you sicker. And PLEASE make sure that your owner checks with their vet first to make sure that these things are OK for you to eat and makes sure that you don't have a really bad problem that you should be checked out for at the vet's office. Like, if your pancreas is really bad, you should not eat greasy things, even though fat is really good for most dogs if it doesn't hurt your tummy. This is because fat has the most calories for a little bit of food, so if you only feel like eating a little you will still get a lot of calories. But I know that none of you have owners who would be so silly, so please consider yourselves disclosified - OK? Here is my list of things to try when you don't want to eat, in no particular order.
* Janie the Yorkie who has bad kidneys, too, says to eat graham crackers plain or with Cheese Whiz on them.
* Sardines on buttered toast is good. So is plain buttered toast, or toast with peanut butter on it.
* Francine, who we adopted from a shelter when she was 14, liked vanilla wafers plain or with cream cheese on them. (But you had to break them up into little pieces. A lot of little dogs like you to do that for them when they are sick.)
* Nova the Tibetian Terrier says she likes to eat scrambled eggs when she's not feeling well.
* Zeke and Kai say to hold out for the roasted chicken and I must say that I agree with them!
* Little pieces of turkey franks are good too, if you warm them up in the microwave first.
* Cheese pizza works sometimes, as does macaroni and cheese if it's really well cooked.
* Strained meat baby food is tasty sometimes and you can even put it in a syringe and feed it that way.
* Lots of people contacted my Mom to suggest chicken soup. Homemade is best, of course.
* I sometimes like warm oatmeal with butter and a little brown sugar stirred in.
* It's hard to go wrong with baked white or sweet potato with some butter on it. Or you can top them with yogurt.
* Anything with whipped cream on it tastes better!
* Sometimes bread or toast cut up into little pieces and covered with warm gravy is good.
* Even when I was feeling very sorry for myself I would sometimes eat a Tater Tot or two (broken into pieces).
I have one last thing to grump about. And that is the botox thing. Did you know, my friends, that some people - and I hope none of your owners are doing this - are going to a place where they get TOAD VENOM injected into their faces? I could hardly believe it when I first heard about it, but yes, it is true! Some people think they look better when their face muscles are paralyzed because then they don't have any wrinkles. Their faces just sort of hang there, kind of like a Basset Hound. Do those dogs look very smart to you? Well, people don't either when they have their faces injected and I guess they are not, if they would do that to themselves. Does injecting your face with toad venom make any more sense to you than the licking toads thing that used to be popular in the 70's?
Gosh, the 70's were a weird time and I am glad as a dog that I didn't have to see the stuff that happened then. Especially at those "happenings" Mom tells me about. Although there were a lot of hippie types running around then who turned out respectable, I guess. Grandma Mitchell says so, when she looks at her children, anyway! My mom says she remembers being in grad school in the 70's when you could get just a few grad students together and a professor who liked your idea for a class and call it a graduate level class and she took one called "Diseases of Membranes" where everyone had to take turns doing a big long seminar on some disease or problem that happened way down in your cells at the membrane level and someone talked about bufotoxin and how toad venom affected the cells. And that is the same thing people are having injected into their faces. And your body tries to do the right thing and get that toad venom out of there because it is a poison and that is why the injections start to last for shorter and shorter periods of time.
So I hope you will tell your owners to forget about the botox injections, get a cheap spray-on tan instead if they must, and to spend the time and money instead to lay in some good food for you to eat when you are healthy and when you are sick. Next month, I will tell you some new things about food that you need to know. I think it is time that we talk about healthy diets again. And whether words like "organic" and "natural" even mean anything, when we talk about pet foods, or whether they are just a big scam. And why it is just as likely that you could get bad bugs like Salmonella from dry foods as a fresh food - betcha didn't think that was possible, but it happened this year and a bunch of dry food had to be recalled!
OH! And you have to remember to check out the info on the website about the Howl-O-Ween Pet Parade that our town is having next month. Look at the bottom of the website tabs. Our hospital is going to have a table there and Canuke will be there as the Knollwood Mascot, wearing a very special costume. He is feeling very important about this, so please humor him if you see him there, and tell him he looks fabulous, just fabulous, and then run away quick before you have to roll on the ground while bursting into hysterical laughter. It's not nice to laugh at a big dumb dog!
Until next month, I remain your friend,
LIZZIE
