The Little Pack » food

Pet Mom of the Year, Take Two

Holly — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 02:30:27 +0000

Just call me Pet Mom of the Year. Again. Jackson badly tore his dewclaw over the weekend–the nail sheath was completely torn away from the nail bud. It was super painful for him and I knew the vet would need to put him under anesthesia to cut the nail back. I decided we may as well get his teeth cleaned at the same time. Unfortunately, he had a cracked tooth with an exposed, infected root. I am sure that this has been causing him considerable pain, especially when eating. So, turns out, the reason he acted as though eating his dinner was pure torture was because… it is. Every night he would look at me with agony as though to say, Please don’t make me eat..and every night I would sternly say, Jackson, this is ridiculous, eat your dinner. The end of his tail would wag: thunk, thunk, thunk, and then I would give him The Look. You know, the I-Mean-Business-Boy-and-Don’t-Make-Me-Come-Over-There Look. And because he is such a good boy, he would comply.

Evidence of Cheyenne’s Weirdness

Holly — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 02:17:35 +0000

Soo Shy amidst all her piles of food. If you look closely you will see 4 piles of food, plus crumbs all around her dish. This particular night was pretty tame compared to past nights. And in case you are wondering, each piece of rejected food is sopping wet as though she sampled it, decided it wasn’t to her liking and spit it back out.

Gretel, I mean, Cheyenne

Holly — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 02:59:37 +0000

I think by now we’ve established that Cheyenne is a little weirdo. Should you need proof, please visit here and here. I’ve written in the past about how she has started to play odd little games with her dinner. She is beginning to “save” most of her dinner so she can herd the other animals-dogs and cats, away from her food dish. The herding thing is quite new, this used to only happen outside. Perhaps she is part Australian cattle dog after all.

Apparently merely herding the other animals away from her dish lacked challenge and excitement. While she has always been a messy eater, she has begun to leave food everywhere. This began 2 days ago and I really hoped it was a fluke. It wasn’t. We now have the standard half-chewed pieces not only around her dish but in at least 4 additional piles throughout the entire house, often with a trail between the piles. Was she afraid she might lose her way? IO thinks this is the best thing ever, and follows the trail of crumbs, quickly inhaling the food along the way. I can just see her thinking, “Pinch me, I must be dreaming!”

Cheyenne’s Basenji Side

Holly — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 03:09:54 +0000

We went out for a little while tonight. Jack hadn’t finished his dinner–shocking, I know–so we picked it up and left it on the dining room table. Big mistake. We came home to a chair pulled away from the table and half chewed dog food spit all over the table. Which means:

One of the dogs is capable of pulling out the chair.
Which means one of the dogs is smart enough to use said chair to climb up on the table.
Which means one of the dogs was on top of the table. Eating.
One dog in particular spits half chewed pieces of dog food around her bowl while eating.
That dog, unsurprising, is Cheyenne.

So we think that she was on top of the table eating and watching out the window and when we came home, she quick spit it all out and came to greet us. Sigh… will she ever cease to amaze us?

Food Wars

Holly — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 03:31:34 +0000

Cheyenne guarded her dish all night and delighted in taunting Dixie with her food. When Dixie walked by, Cheyenne took a few pieces in her mouth, laid down facing Dixie, and spit the pieces out of her mouth. Concerned that Dixie couldn’t actually see said pieces of food, She made a point of picking them up in her mouth again, tossing her head around several times, and then, you guessed it, spitting the pieces of food out directly in front of Dixie but out of Dixie’s reach. She didn’t need English to convey her message–it was crystal clear: this is mine and not yours and don’t you wish you could have what is mine? I could practically hear her singing “nah nah nah nah nah.” This went on for several minutes, and at one point Cheyenne became insecure and began nibbling on her leg (“corncobbing”) to try and relax. Dixie began woofing. Woofing soon escalates to barking, which only gets louder and louder, so I removed the dish. We were laughing so hard, we were almost crying.

Cheyenne Learns from Jack…

Holly — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 03:42:03 +0000

…and not the way we would have wanted her to. First, it is important to explain that getting Jack to eat has been an ongoing battle from the beginning. I first tried feeding him Wellness. He hated it. I tried mixing it with Eukanuba, he picked out all the Wellness pieces out of his dish and spit them out. I gave in. And so it began.

People say an animal won’t starve himself, but Jackson is living proof that that is not true. I used to free-feed him and IO when they were little and I was of the opinion that if he was hungry, he would eat. Well, unfortunately, that premise did not hold true in Jack’s case. He got so thin that not only were his ribs visible, but so were his hip bones. At the vet’s office he weighed in at a mere 19 pounds. I was given a choice: separate him from IO at mealtimes, and give him a few weeks to see if he put on a little weight, or do tests right then to rule out things like liver failure. Although we knew more than likely he just wasn’t eating, I opted for all the tests, so that if there was a problem we could start treating it immediately. I was told by my vet to try putting broth and cheese on his food… sigh. Turns out, all tests were negative, in a few weeks he began to put on weight, and consensus was that he was being overly polite to IO, letting her eat all his food to prove his loyalty to her. She has the opposite problem with food, by the way, so if he has dog anorexia, she has dog bulimia. Over time, and many, many different foods later, he will not even consider eating his dinner without cheese on it. And if he goes too long without eating, I take him through the drive-thru and get him a plain cheeseburger, or make his new fave–chicken, brown rice and broth with a little dog food mixed in.

So fast-forward to the addition of Cheyenne. When we first got Cheyenne, she had been surrendered twice that we knew of and major trust issues. She would swallow as much food as she could at every opportunity, as though she didn’t know when she might eat again. Two years later and all of a sudden she has become picky, refusing to eat her dinner, waiting until we put cheese on it to eat it. And lately, picking out the cheese and just picking at her food. So now, here we are, putting cheese and broth on her and Jack’s dinner, and instead of being annoyed, I can only see it as good. For Cheyenne to be picky about her dinner means that she completely trusts us and knows she will never go hungry again. And that makes me incredibly glad.