We finally got Minnie eating again over the weekend. At first, 90% of her diet was sandwich turkey. It’s pretty good sandwich turkey — Julie and I eat it ourselves. But it’s a lousy diet for a dog. Still, the priority was to to get her to eat anything.
Since Minnie’s health problems started a few weeks ago, I’ve talked to other dog owners who described feeding all kinds of junk food to their sick dogs, just to get them to eat. Our vet said she has a senior dog with a heart condition whom she sometimes feeds take-out burritos. A neighborhood couple with a collie in chemo fed the dog microwave pizza. These are responsible dog owners who care about their dogs' health and nutrition. But when a dog is sick, the priority is to get them to eat.
Dogs have a powerful food aversion instinct. If they eat a food while they are sick to their stomach, they will associate that food with being sick and shun that food, even if it was formerly a favorite. This can go on for a month, and there is no guarantee they will ever get over it. This is our problem with Minne now. She won’t eat the kibble she ate all her life. She won’t eat the prescription food we gave her — she loved that for a day or two and now it’s a hard nope for her. She won’t eat any of a variety of treats she used to love.
Yesterday, I tried her on Blue Buffalo canned dog food and that was a breakthrough. She loves it! I am optimistic and hopeful this will continue.. If not, well, that was the first brand I tried so I’m optimistic that if she turns her nose up at the Blue Buffalo, we can quickly find another brand more to her liking. People caring for sick dogs say they keep a few different varieties of food around the house and switch around as the dog develops food allergy.
As Minnie eats more, her energy and positive attitude returns. She still seems tired a lot of the time, even by the standards of a a dog, an animal that sleeps up to 20 hours a day. Hopefully her energy and positive attitude will continue to increase. On the other hand, she is a sick old dog, so I’m working on accepting things as they are.
The priority now is to get her weight back up to normal. She’s noticeably lost a lot of weight in the past few weeks. She’s alarmingly skinny.
The Blue Buffalo food is great for a healthy dog (according to my reading — I am by no means an expert on this!). But it’s bad for a dog with kidney failure. In a few weeks, I’d like to transition her to a prescription brand. On the other hand, many dogs with kidney failure never take to the prescription food. If that happens, that will shorten Minnie’s life. On the other hand, food she loves will improve her quality of life. With pets as with people, lifespan vs. quality of life are often in uneasy balance.
I’ve reduced Minnie’s walking from the previous 3+ miles per day to a little bit more than 1 mile per day. And I try to let her set the pace more when we walk.