Tika Brain, Who Knows

SUMMARY: Meds and kibble and communication.

Kibble

Back in July, Tika started refusing her regular kibble or eating just a bit of it. She'd eat other stuff, but not that. So I bought her a big bag in early August of the different kibble that our dog sitter successfully fed her. That lasted 2-3 weeks, then she wouldn't eat that *or* the traditional kibble (which is what Boost still gets). Then I bought 5 small bags of random kinds of kibble. One of them she rejected after about 2 weeks, but has been cheerfully eating the rotation, fed from a different one of those small bags each meal.

Yesterday morning, I set down her food and she sniffed it, then looked at me accusingly. I tried holding the bowl for her, and offering pieces right out of my hand. Sniff, look. Then she stepped over in Boost's direction and tilted her head as though trying to see what Boost had, then looked back at me, then looked at Boost's dish again, then back at me.

So I put away the kibble from her bowl and gave her some of the traditional kibble. She ate it happily. Hence, I'm putting that back into the rotation to see how that goes. Funny dog.

Meds

Tika will take her meds if I hide them thorough in something tasty, like canned dogfood. It has to be very thoroughly hidden, though, as Tika sniffs carefully at everything that I offer her and won't take it if she detects meds. The Vetmedin is the toughest because the pill is so large. Often I have to break it in half and try again one half at a time.

Saturday night in the hotel, she was lying on the bed and I sat next to her. I offered her the hidden Vetmedin pill and she refused it. Tried surrounding it with more food--refused. Broke it in half, cleaned it off, hid it with fresh food. Sniff, reject. Tried begging, tried offering it in a different hand--sniff and refuse. "Oh, Tika," I said sadly, ready to give up for the evening, "you have to take your drugs." I started to stand up, but she gently placed a paw on my arm and looked at me. I stayed there and asked, "what do you want?" She looked at my hand with the pill. I offered it to her. Very slowly, very gently, she took it and swallowed it.

Sometimes I just don't understand dogs.

But I love my Tika just the same.

So Many Sneaky Owners

SUMMARY: And here's the latest episode in Tika's meds saga.

On Friday I reported how Tika partly rejected the cream cheese pill hidings. Friday night, no problem, she took plain cream cheese and all the pills wrapped in cream cheese.

Saturday morning, she wouldn't take even plain cream cheese right at the beginning, just sniffed suspiciously and turned her head away. I gave it to Boost, tried another scoop with Tika. She took that, so I wondered whether maybe I had contaminated the other spot of cheese in the container with a molecule of pill somehow. She took most of her pills with cream cheese after the initial refusal, but I had to resort to peanut butter again for the last one.

Saturday evening, no problem with the cream cheese.

Sunday morning, no cream cheese for any reason whatsoever, plain or fancy or offered to boost first or nuthin' nohow. So everything went down with peanut butter.

Sunday evening, took a little cream cheese but then refused all with any pills in it, so back to peanut butter.

Back to peanut butter after failing with cream cheese all day Monday. Today I didn't even bother with the cream cheese, just went straight to PB. So far so good.

Meanwhile, getting lots of suggestions from other sneaky owners on how they sneak their dogs' meds into their little digestive systems:

• Almond butter as an alternative (thanks Elayne)
• Pill pockets (thx Cedarfield and Tervpack)
• I thought about using pitted dates in which to hide the pills, so I offered her a small piece of date during the day to see whether she'd eat it. Nope.
  For a food-motivated dog who'd rather eat than anything else, she sure is picky!
• Marshmallows (Tervpack again)
• Kraft Easy Cheese (thx Channan)
• And of course I know that I can resort to grinding up the pills to make them harder to recognize

Now I'm prepared in case Mr. Peanut Butter starts to fail me!

At least she seems happy and active, enthusiastically running and playing. Yay, Tika!

Cream Cheese is Out, Peanut Butter is In

SUMMARY: Update on Tika taking/not taking meds.

Wellllll last night it took several tries with increasing quantities of cream cheese to get Tika to take each half of the chewable tablet. She took the capsule and two pills, though.

This morning, different story. Sniffed each offer of cream cheese before taking it. If nothing else, this might be a good exercise in finally teaching her some self control about taking fingers along with whatever food is offered. If there was something in the cheese, she refused it.

I managed to get the two little pills into her, and the capsule by offering a whole ton of plain cream cheese before and after (all of which she sniffed suspiciously before taking), but the first half of the chewable went down only with a tremendous amount of cream cheese spread on my hands, my jeans, the floor, and her left shoulder (don't ask).

After that, she wouldn't even take plain cream cheese and quickly abandoned the kitchen when I tried to offer her some.

However, I was able to go to the emergency peanut butter supplies to get her to finally take that last half of the so-called chewable tablet.

Not sure how long the peanut butter will work. I bought some canned dogfood to try if/when the spreadables stop working. Then it'll have to be grinding up the pills and hoping she won't reject the whole shebang. Need to find out whether I can open the capsule and sprinkle the contents into food.

Dogs always provide a challenge, don't they.

Meds for Tika

SUMMARY: Confounded dog brains, confounded drug prices.

Back on November 10, after that trip to the emergency room, I started Tika on the diuretic Disal (furosimide), 2x/day (half of a small disk-shaped pill).

On November 12, I realized that she also had that anal gland infection and started her on the antibiotic Cephalexin, 2x/day (one green capsule).

After we got the ultrasound done on November 19, which revealed the messy heart situation, we started her on Enalapril to keep her blood pressure down 2x/day (one small disk-shaped pill) and Vetmedin (Pimobendan) to strengthen her heart 2x/day (one large chewable tablet).

So she had 4 meds, twice a day, just chewing up the chewable tablet and the others each wrapped in a slice of string cheese. (Boost also got cheese to keep everyone happy.)

As of November 28, she had done the first one 36 times over 18 days, the 2nd one 32 times over 16 days, and the last two 20 times over 10 days.

Then she rejected the antibiotic. I rewrapped it several times, but by then she (the dog who snaps food from your hand, gulps it down and asks for more) was taking it each time very gingerly and then quickly spitting it out. Eventually the capsule just became soggy and I gave up on that one for the evening.

The next morning, Nov 29th, she spit out that one (with the cheese wrapping) and she also spit out the teeny tiny half of a Disal pill (also with its cheese wrapping). I did finally get her to take them both.

The renter all along has been saying "cream cheese is the best." He watched this production and again said, "cream cheese". I said that I've been giving dogs pills in semisoft cheese for years without any problems until right then and I was sure everything would be fine.

The next morning when I handed her the chewable tablet--keep in mind that she has cheerfully accepted and chewed 24 of them so far--she took it and spit it out immediately. I handed it back to her, same thing. I wrapped it in cheese. Same thing. I broke it in half and wrapped it in cheese. Same thing. What was going through that little brain that suddenly decided she wasn't going to chew those any more?

Finally I smeared it with peanut butter and that worked, but peanut butter is pretty greasy and smelly.

That evening, tried handing it to her plain again, but no, she was having none of it. So I went out and bought a tub of cream cheese. (And, hey, whatever happened to those foil-wrapped blocks that it used to come in? Now it's all in plastic tubs!)

Now she's consuming all the pills again happily as I surround each with a tiny blob of cream cheese. A bit messy but not as bad as peanut butter.

So.

Yesterday I went to the vet's to get refills on everything (except the antibiotics), and laid out over $150 for a month's supply. Yikes! Maybe this isn't as bad as cancer treatments, but that adds up to a lot of money that wasn't in my budget, for every month that she goes on surviving (which I hope she'll do for a long time).

Vet said that he'd gladly transfer any prescriptions that I could find more cheaply at human pharmacies (not the Vetmedin, of course). I'll look into that before the next refills.

Dang health care costs! Plus the price of the cream cheese! :-)

Update: Dec 5, 9:15AM PST: Funny thing: I took this photo a couple of days ago. You can see that the field is sopping wet from all the rain we'd received up through that morning. Just now I notice that the sprinklers are on in the far background! I never noticed them while we were there. Great use of our scarce water resources, eh?

Another USDAA Day One of Two

SUMMARY: Lots of news.

For a while for a year or so, I'd been giving Tika rimadyl before & during weekends, but she hadn't seemed to need it in so long--after last weekend, and with the toenail dragging thing, although mostly she's looked happy and active and healthy all weekend, I gave her one last night and one this morning. Not sure whether that's the operative event, but she ran really nicely today. Fast, happy, perky.

That didn't necessarily equate into Qs:

• Jumpers, because of the angle of a jump, she apparently misread my being behind her as a rear cross when in fact I was going straight, so a turn in the wrong direction and a refusal at a tunnel. Her time was still pretty nice despite that extra yardage, but no Q.
• Snooker, because of the angle of a jump, she apparently misread my being behind her as a rear cross when in fact I was going straight, so a turn in the wrong direction and I could see it coming in slow motion in my mind as she backjumped the jump, so a quick exit with only 8 points.
• Steeplechase, knocked one bar, not sure why (it wasn't a cross or anything odd), and her time would've Qed without the bar but we were 3 seconds over with the bar. Didn't help that two dogs scratched so we again had to be combined with the very-fast 16" crowd.
• Standard, went mostly nicely. Still a lonnnnnng down on the table despite practicing a whole lot of downs before our run. She was 10 full seconds behind the winning dog as a result, but everyone else crapped out and she was still under time, so our only Q for the day and a 2nd place.

Speaking of rimadyl, our dog-friend and often partner Chaps, whom I mentioned last week had decided to scratch the entire weekend because he was randomly gimpy, apparently ate an entire bottle of rimadyl and spent the night and most of today at the vet's with an IV. Fortunately they caught it in time and he went home this evening. Thank Dog! The very obedient dog who won't even take food from the floor without permission, somehow decided to take the bottle off the counter and help himself.

Some vets whom I know are very much against chewable dog drugs exactly because of this sort of thing. A blessing and a curse--i can just toss the rimadyl pill to Tika and she eats it, no cheese or monitoring required.

Boost's day started out nicely when our customized C-ATCH ribbon from February was delivered--and what a huge ribbon! But our agility  day was the usual mess.

• She once again killed me on Snooker by getting through a nice 4-red opening and most of the closing and then not coming in over a very easy serpentine at #7...again almost in slow motion I could see her shorten up her steps shorter shorter shorter trying to decide whether to take the juuuuummmmmppp...and no. I almost had to shoot myself later, though. I was gasping for breath from running and frustrated, so I walked to the finish line instead of running, despite people yelling "run to the finish line!" I figured, why bother, we had only 48 points and others were getting more than that. But until almost the very last of the 30-plus dogs ran, it looked like one or two of the 48s would actually get a super-Q but, because I'd walked off, we were the slowest by a second or so and wouldn't have gotten it. Thankfully, enough dogs got more than 48 to save me from having to kick myself repeatedly.  So--yet another Q but not a Super-Q.
• Steeplechase was a mess. But someone complimented us on a fantastic lead-out.
• Jumpers was a mess. A four-jump lead-out and she did that nicely, too. OK, so lead-outs are a strength at the moment.
• Gamblers opening was fine until she ran past a jump that she had to take for me to go on to the Aframe--three times! As a result, the whistle blew while we were on the wrong side of the field and I had to stop and think about how to get to the gamble from there. She actually did do the gamble, but not only were we over time, she knocked a bar as well.
• Standard, argh, I don't remember. Not a Q.
• Pairs, missed her weave entry, then I did a front cross to try to keep her out of the wrong side of a tunnel and she wrapped so far around me, or something odd, that she took the wrong side anyway, for an E.

Speaking of Boost not being able to get a Q--our classmate and Boost's full sister (but 4 years younger), TCam, today at the AKC try-outs won the first 26" position on the World Team for this year! Are you listening, Boost? Just take obstacles in front of you!

I still felt surprisingly chipper despite our Qing failures today--weather was great, surrounded by good friends and hard workers-- and we were done pretty early, so took a break to snap a few photos of wildflowers on the hillside next to the agility field.

Plus a gratuitous photo of Team Small Dog's Otterpop and Laura because that's the only photo I took of anyone else all day. Otterpop has an amazing "Bang!" drop and roll on the run. Plus loves her frisbee.