Gio's New Pancreatitis Menu

Gio has gas. Not just normal toots, but "peel-the-paint-from-the-wall-run-for-your-life-clear-the-room-hangs-like-a-thick-fog-over-the-ground ass fumes of death"! Serious, not exaggerating even a teensy bit! It's to the point that Romeo won't even sleep on the bed with him anymore. If this keeps up Gio will be spending the nights in his crate, which he hasn't done at home since he was a wee pup.

He had another vet check today, it was time to get his phenobarbital levels tested to see how things are progressing there. I told the vet about the flatulence and she thought it was just him adjusting to the new food (ie. canned yuck). I guess that makes sense. He was on antibiotics for a week, so that probably killed off a good handful of his normal gut flora. Then he was abruptly switched from a home-made raw diet to a canned rice-y mush diet. So, if that is the case, why not switch him now while he is adjusting and just be done with it. His bloodwork has all indicated that he is making a good recovery, so I'm goint to start switching him to a better diet slowly.

I've done a good bit of research into home-made pancreatic diets, and there are three main diets that I have come across.

• Dr. Dodds' Liver Cleansing Diet (also good for pancreatitis)
• Dr. Billinghurst Pancreatic Diet
• Monica Segal's pancreatic diet (since this one, to my knowledge, is not posted online, I will not go into detail about it, rather refer interested people to her book "Monica Segal's Optimal Nutrition")

The basic idea behind all the diets is high veggie content and lean meat in small quantities (~25%). Dr. Dodds and Monica Segal strongly recommend a cooked diet in situations of pancreatitis. Dr. Billinghurst recommends raw. Since the proportions of veggie to meat are roughly the same in all three diets, I've adapted them a bit to form a diet that I can manage and maintain.

I've just started making my first batch, here is what I've done:

• Pushed 4.5lb of raw cabbage, zucchini, white potato, sweet potato, carrot, spinach, apple, and broccoli through a juicer, collecting all the juice and pulp in a large bowl. Added 3 crushed digestive enzyme tablets. It's currently sitting in the fridge.
  
• Thawing on the counter are 2lb of cod filets and about 1/4lb raw beef liver. I will poach the cod and braise the liver, chop and mix into the veggie slop.
  
• Portion and freeze.
  
• I've purchased a infant's liquid multivitamin which I will give once daily as per Dr. Dodds' Liver Cleansing Diet. Also a probiotic capsule twice a day to help him adjust after the antibiotics.
  

I have no idea how much Gio will have to eat. I'm guessing something like 2 cups per day, so this will likely last me a week or so. I'll have to measure it all out later to know for sure. I've got about 7 cans of the yuck left over, so I will be giving roughly half and half canned and home-made until the cans are all gone. Then hopefully we can just continue on with the home-made, gradually increasing the amount of meat in proportion to veggie over the next couple of months. I'm planning on taking this very slowly, probably sticking with at least a portion of the diet as veggie in the end though I would like to get the meat up to at least half of the diet over time, and eventually switch to raw again. But that may be a year or so from now before we switch. Told ya I was planning on going slowly! As severe as Gio's pancreatitis was, I don't want to take the risk of going too quickly in getting him back onto a carnivore's diet!

Snow Melt 2009

Okay, okay, I know it doesn't look all THAT different from a couple days ago. But it is currently 2C (about 35F) out there so things are melting like mad! I can't walk out my front door without getting rained on from all the snow melting off the roof. Correct, I do not have rain gutters. Once I can safely place a ladder on the ground without clearing snow and ice, I will be putting rain gutters up. But for now, I just have to dash quickly out the door between droplets.

Fun with Kongs

The good thing about Gio's canned yuck food, it squishes into a Kong quite nicely!


While Gio got his afternoon meal in his Kong, Romeo got good ol' peanut butter.

Further proof that Romeo is just plain weird ...

Ahh Spring!

Makes an old dog feel like a pup again.

Albeit, a barky gap-tooth pup with a bad Poodle-do. Look man, even Romeo is embarrassed to be seen with you. And Romeo is the one that never did figure out why the snowballs I threw for him got lost so easily.


Today was such a gorgeous day, that I couldn't just sit around like a lump, as was the initial plan. I did a bunch of spring cleaning and cranked all the windows open in the house to air it out a bit. It was beginning to smell a little doggy in here, so even though it was barely above freezing outside it was nice to get a breeze blowing all the cobwebs (read: hair balls) away.

Then the boys and I went to the park for a good run. Well, the boys ran, I don't do a whole lot of running.

I chucked snowballs for the guys because we are now officially out of tennis balls. They had a blast running and being fools in the big empty park.

I caught Gio mid-pounce onto what he thought was the snowball that I threw.
No idea if it actually was or not.

Chase games.

Something about the mounds of snow on either side of the path was just irresistible for the dogs! Romeo would run back and forth across the path from snow mound to snow mound.

Then Gio joined in ...
Then it was WAR!

Look guys, you BOTH fit on the snow mounds. Now isn't that better?

"Hey, with a lame-ass poodle-cut like this, you gotta do
SOMETHING to feel like a man again!"

I should also mention that today was the first day that I have gone outside with only a light fleece jacket instead of my big winter coat! YAY!

Volunteer Badge

We are currently in the process of dealing with all the red tape involved with becoming a therapy dog volunteer team with Saskatoon City Hospital. The Saskatoon Health Region has their own volunteer process, as does St. John Ambulance Therapy Dog Program, so there are lots of required meetings and orientations, paperwork and the like. We are nearing the end, almost ready to start our official visitations.

Today I met with the volunteer coordinator at Saskatoon City Hospital to fill out some final paperwork and get a photo taken for my Saskatoon Health Region volunteer badge.

And something that totally made my day was that they wanted to make a volunteer badge for Romeo as well! Totally hilarious, I'm thrilled!!


And Romeo is quite proud to have his own badge as well ...

Back in Action

Gio got to go back to "work" today. The vet said that as long as we keep things light and easy, he can go back to his normal training again. Thursday nights are drop-in nights for the group of people I do rally-o with, so I packed up the boys and headed over to the Hound Lounge for some practice.

Gio isn't allowed any food other than the icky canned slop that he is still getting 5 times a day, so instead of treats he got to work for a BALL!

"I GOT A BALL!"

I'm actually quite impressed with how the ball worked in some cases. It was very inconvenient for the basic things, but worked really well when we were practicing "moving down". (Either that, or he was just so excited to be back to work that he threw away his silly ideas regarding moving downs.) I might have to keep working with the ball instead of food for some things.

I did notice that he tired out quite quickly, so we kept his practice sessions nice and short, only about 10 minutes total.

I'm working Romeo on the finer points of rally-o versatility. He's got the "switch" position figured out (right heel position) and is getting to be really good at the various side changes. He's not very fluent with the right bum movements yet, but there is improvement. I have visions of Romeo being just as smooth at heeling on the right as he is on the left. It's a dream I have, and at the rate that he is progressing, it may actually be quite attainable! This year we are going to focus on CARO C Stream Bronze (CRB) and Silver (CRS), then maybe next year he will be smooth enough to start competing in CARO Versatility!

Of course, what is a drop-in practice session without some socializing?

Beg all you want, Gee. Everyone knows better than to give you any treats!

Snow Melt 2009

Oreo and Misty from Sara's Blog commented on our previous post with shock that we still have a lot of snow.

Yes, we still have a lot of snow!

While it is a little slower than normal to disappear this year, it isn't completely unusual for Saskatoon to still be covered in the white stuff in March. But today was a very nice day out, so we have quite a good melt started. As such, I've decided to document the melt in a little series I will call "Snow Melt 2009". This series could also be accurately called "The Revealing of My New Yard". I have no idea what my yard looks like, I've only ever seen it covered in snow. Will it all be mud? Will there be grass? Will there be copious amounts of weeds that have been mown to resemble grass from a distance? Who knows! SO EXCITING!!

Day 1 ...



We reached a high of -2C (roughly 26F) today, so things are really dripping outside and it's like the parting of the Red Sea when you try to drive down the road.