Lisa's Lounge

Elway's doing great! He's just staying stable as ever. Which of course, I am VERY happy about. His last visit was good - bad cells down, good cells way up... but they had to do some different tests for a different chemo, and found that his kidneys aren't too happy. (Nothing major yet, just the hint of some elevated enzyme levels that shouldn't be) So, Dr. Brown decided he needed a new low phosphate diet. Now, mind you, we cook better for this cute little doggie than we do for ourselves. His diet has consisted of ground turkey, potatoes, chicken broth, rice, etc., and he eats twice a day. Well, her new diet suggestion was rice or baby rice cereal, HAMBURGER, and boiled eggs with beef broth instead of chicken broth. She faxed over a list of foods and the portions. So I called them - had a few questions. About the portions. Had they met Elway, The Beagle? I just felt like they should know him pretty well by now. The portions were maybe as much as we have been feeding him in ONE sitting - and it was supposed to be for the whole day. He currently weighs 27 lbs, which is right where he needs to be. When we first took him in last July, he was down to 21 lbs. At his fattest he was 33. Anyway, Deanna at the Vet's office assured me that it would be plenty and YES it was for the whole day. I was a little concerned about doing rice again, since he always pushed it out of his bowl before. And he's really been digging the taters.

Okay - here's the new meal:



He ate every drop. However, that was this morning. Now, if you have a Beagle, or probably other dogs too, if they are hungry and as spoiled as he is, they don't just leave you alone if you decide they've had enough food. He scoots his bowl all over our tile floor "clang! clang!" and then looks at you. So tonight I gave him a smaller portion than this morning of the new diet. He wolfed it down and I heard "clang! clang!" again. Being goofy as I am, I tried to reason with him that that was all he was getting. I totally blamed it on Dr. Brown and Deanna - to let him know that's who he should be mad at. He just smiled his cute little smile, wagging his tail and looking at me with those big brown eyes. As if he was saying "Yeah, whatever. If I look cute enough I know you'll give in". Which I did.

After that, I saw him running around a bit crazed, and knew he must have a treat of some sort that he was trying to bury. Sure enough, he had pulled the rawhide bag down off of the dog food bin and helped himself to two of them.

You don't know how excited that makes me feel! It's like he's not sick at all, being his normal food crazy self.

"You can say any fool thing to a dog, and the dog will give you this look that says, 'My God, you're RIGHT! I NEVER would've thought of that!" - Dave Barry