Sunday, October 24, 2010

Berry Powerful Indeed

There is a nearby holistic vet who intrigues me. I love my regular vet and plan to continue seeing her, but I've personally found a lot more relief from my various ailments through non-traditional means.

Example: I've had hip problems almost my entire life. When I was 15 or so, we tried to figure out exactly what it was. I had an osteo specialist at Children's Hospital Boston - a hip and pelvic specialist - look at it and my Xrays and me. He poked my muscles, measured my legs, noted one was longer, discussed the clicking and pain, and told me I would need a hip replacement before I would turn 30. Flash forward almost 10 years to a chiropractor who, when he didn't see the results he'd hoped to fix my pelvis, measured my legs and weight distribution and noticed one leg was different from the other. Oh, he said, your body has to compensate for that by rotating your hip back. Put this lift in your shoe of your shorter leg so your legs act the same length. That stupid piece of heel-shaped rubber decreased my pain about 80%.

Anyway - Clover went to visit his friend Pizza yesterday. Pizza is a 7 month old Shih Tzu with a name her owner finds hysterical and no one else understands (the notable exception was, when my friend went to pick her up after being spayed, she walked in and said, "I'm here to pick up Pizza"). Clover was happy to see her when she was slightly freaked out by him, then he started ignoring her when she decided he was ok, and then he found a toy of hers to play with. But weirdly, Clover peed in their house. Clover is a meticulously clean, house-broken dog. It was weird.

Then he peed on the steps on the way out of their apartment. Then again in my parents' house. And twice while we were walking. It didn't occur to me until late last night that he might have a bladder infection.

Both vets I regularly use (Lindsey in Providence, and Acorn where Clover had his knees done, which is near my parents) are closed Saturday afternoon and Sunday and refer to emergency treatment centers. It costs $300 to walk into one of those, never mind any subsequent (and generally over-priced) treatments. Still $1700 in knee debt, I had to consider my options.

Clover had a normal temperature and there was no blood in his urine. So I turned to my home remedy for low grade UTIs: cranberry juice. Ok, so I usually drink a container of juice which seemed like an unlikely thing to make Clover do, but the dog eats anything, and there were fresh frozen whole cranberries on hand. I figured, give him cranberries with dinner and reassess in the morning. I gave him probably 3/4 a cup of cranberries, lots of water, and took him out frequently.

He seemed to feel better this morning, so I gave him another serving of cranberries for breakfast. He was back to peeing on a normal schedule and seemed more comfortable. He's sleepy, but his temp is still normal, and he continues to seem better. He is less hunched up and is just acting more comfortable.

I plan on more cranberries for dinner and seeing the vet tomorrow - he is due for shots (I want to do titers), I found a lump in the muscle of his upper arm the needs to get looked at, and just an annual exam as well (which will show us some kidney function on the new food). This time at least, I might have avoided the $300 emergency fee.


As always I am not a vet and do not recommend self-diagnosis or home treatment. Please talk to your qualified pet professional with questions in regard to your dog's health and well being.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Now we're cookin'

Let's talk dog food.

As you might recall, in July Clover's kidney levels were elevated. After a discussion with the vet(s), he was moved off his no-grain, higher protein food. Please note that I think higher protein foods are fine; I personally believe that 40% protein or more is pretty absurd for a toy dog, but I was feeding Wellness CORE which was around 32%. However, his older and weaker kidneys seemed stressed, so we switched.

He'd been on no-grain food because we thought he had a grain allergy. But he'd since been diagnosed with year-round environmental allergies, so we thought that moving him back to regular wellness dog food (which has healthful grains like oatmeal and barley, not filler grains like corn) would be all right.

Apparently, Clover is pretty allergic to grain. Whoops. His oinking got worse again, and he was so itchy that even petting him made him pick up his hind leg and scratch. Even when he was on grain-free food before, I was kind of lazy in that he still ate treats and canned food with grain in it. I clearly had to cut all of this out.

So I did some research and asked for some input and Clover is now on what must be the only moderate-protein grain-free food in the world, Taste of the Wild (the salmon variety). Check. Wellness makes grain-free biscuts that he likes. Check.

But grain-free canned dog food costs almost $3 a can. (I picked up a case of high-end but healthful-grain cans at Job Lot for $1 each, and with some sale searching I usually find about the same).

As I stood their looking at a 200% increase, I thought, "It has to be cheaper to make this."

So I did.
  • Pork (three organic boneless chops)
  • Apples
  • Fresh frozen green beans and carrots
  • Cottage cheese
  • Parsley
  • Dried Seaweed
  • Olive oil
I had seaweed and olive oil. Everything else cost me about $20 at Trader Joe's. I cooked the meat, cubed everything, and threw it in the food processor with some water. The result does indeed look like canned dog food.

I refrigerated some and froze some. We'll see how long it lasts and do a cost-benefit analysis.

When I offered Clover a taste on a spoon, his eyes literally bugged out like a cartoon character. I'm lucky I didn't lose the spoon.


Note that I used canned food for supplemental feeding only. Please discuss diet changes with your vet or qualified pet nutritionist.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Moving Along

I apologize again for another hiatus. Life gets in the way, what can I say.


Clover is now more than 12 weeks out from surgery. He goes to the dog park (where he mostly just pees on things, but hey, he can lift his leg), goes for walks, likes to run, jumps on the sofa, even leaps over little creeks nowadays. He let me know when he was ready to do these things (generally, by doing them and not turning up limping that night). It's satisfying to see him trot like he never even had any knee problems.

I admit that some days he seems sore. He can move about gingerly in the rear, sometimes looks wistfully at me for a lift onto the sofa, and occasionally licks his knees as if they are bothering him.

But on the 23rd of this month, Clover will be 13 and a half. If you apply the x7 rule, that's nearly 95. I hope I am still leaping over creek beds when I'm 95.

At this point, the blog is going to start moving away from Clover's knee recovery and more toward general misadventures. I am still going to try to pull guest posts about various topics, and hope that you will continue to be entertained and enlightened.