Monday Mischief: Cake & A Good Check-Up

Happy ... yawn ... Monday!  I woke up this morning already thinking about going to bed early tonight.  That's bad, right?  It's cold, the humans are fighting off colds, and a certain Doberman mix is back to her 'ole midnight 2am snack and pee habit. 

With everything going on last week, I got into a little mischief of my own by forgetting to auto-set Sophie's birthday post.  Which meant it went up in the late afternoon early evening on Saturday.  shhh... 

All was forgotten when she saw her peanut butter-banana cake from The Barkery...  

I think it's safe to say she loved it...

 

Nom-Nom-Nom ... Sophie tried her best to munch as much of the yogurt frosting off before I took the cake away to cut it up for sharing.

On another note, I'm happy to report :::knocking on wood::: that Zeus had a great weekend!  We had a check-up with Dr. C on Friday morning, which included a recheck of his chest x-rays.  It looks like the pneumonia has cleared up again, but we extended the antibiotics by 1 week just as a safety. 

We talked in depth about his mega esophagus and feeding, as my biggest concern last week turned to finding a way to get him to keep his food down.  Even with 3-4 very small meals, we were still seeing regurgitation nearly each time we fed him, and while it wasn't a lot, it's still a concern and got me wondering if it was possibly something to do with his stomach and not mega-e.  Plus, the fact that he is at risk for aspiration pneumonia every time he regurgitates. 

Dr. C was pretty confident that what we were seeing is nothing more than his mega-e, and that his esophagus was probably not retracting at all. There's nothing we can "do" for that, except lots of trial and error to figure out what food works best at this point. I'd already increased his amount of canned food and decreased the amount of kibble.  On Friday evening, I went down to just a small handful of kibble mixed with nearly a full can... and guess what?  It's working! (still knocking on wood) So far, so good! Not even a single regurgitation episode all weekend!  Yes!  (We're officially at a full can with one small handful of kibble mixed in at each meal and will weigh in, literally, in a week or so to see if that's enough to keep his weight consistent or if we'll have to adjust for more canned).

Now, for the drawback..... Zeus is eating Merrick Senior Medley.  For a dog his size, this means a case of their 13.2 oz cans lasts only 3-4 days, and we're looking at a new expense of about $225 per month for his canned food alone.  It's going to be tough.  I'm trying to find some way to do something to get the expense cut back.  Wish us luck....