Baby Talk? Maybe

I don't like to think of myself as a stock character, although I suppose other people may see me that way when they hear that I have a Pom. You know the stereotype: a largish middle-aged woman with a tiny dog that she carries around with her, either in her arms or in a tote chosen to complement the dog (and probably her outfit, too); she lets the dog do whatever it wants, feeds it filet mignon, and considers it her baby, talking to it as if it were. Well, I don't carry Tony around, although I do pick him up from time to time, he doesn't sleep on my bed, you know what I feed him, and I don't let him run wild all over the house. However, I do talk to him all the time, and some of that, I must admit, is in baby talk.

I can't help it. He's little and cute, and that just brings it out. I call him by several pet names (and yes, I know that's not a good idea in terms of obedience, but he seems to know I mean him, and when I'm actually giving a command I always use his actual name), including Sweetie (ironic, considering his diabetes), Baby, Cutieboots (I have no idea where I got that), T-Dog, Tony Bambino, Tootsiebelle (yes, I know that should be for a female), and so on. My younger brother, Alex (not the one who gave me Tony), came up with a weird prank when Tony first came here, which was designed to annoy Eric, the brother who did give me Tony. Before Tony arrived, Alex said that we should change Tony's name to "Cha Cha," for reasons I never fully understood. Since then, whenever Alex sees him, he calls him "Tony the Cha Cha," as if it were all one word. I think Tony only hears the beginning of it, but he does answer to it.

I sing to him, too. In fact, Tony is pretty much the only one to hear me sing, since I only do it when we're alone. There's the "Tony-baby" song, the Naptime song, "Me and my baby," and, of course, "It's Bedtime." I sort of use the naptime and bedtime songs as indicators that I expect him to sleep, and they seem to work that way, at least some of the time. The others pop up spontaneously, and sometimes, if I'm holding him when they do, I help him dance (he does a mean Cabbage Patch). Yeah, it's sickeningly cute.

What I don't do is baby talk in public, beyond the pet names. I see this as respecting his dignity, but other people are less concerned with this. My mother, for just one example, talks to him as if he is a baby, without using baby talk per se, saying things like, "Oh, you little sweetie." She's a retired neo-natal nurse, so it's probably an incurable habit by now. When I have Tony out in public, perfect strangers come running up to him and gush over and at him, in torrents of extra-gooey baby talk: "Ooh! What a pwecious widdo sweetie! Is oo a good doggie?" Then they ask what I think of as the Tony FAQ: What kind of dog is he? Is he a puppy? Do they cost much? etc.

Now, I must confess that Tony does have some "clothing," but he only wears it on special occasions. He has a sweater and a coat, both of which only come out in extremely cold weather. He has elastic jester collars for Halloween and Christmas, but I usually take those off of him after everyone has seen them on him, since the bells appear to get on his nerves. He has a special bandanna for the Fourth of July, too. The only truly silly outfit he has is a teeny Hawaiian shirt that I found on clearance back in 2001. I bought it because we had "Tiki'd" the wet bar in our basement as part of a family-reunion sort of thing when my mom turned 70. He had it on for about 20 minutes before he figured out how to get his legs out of it, then he rolled around on the floor until it was off all the way. I never did see how he did the first part of his escape act. I don't put rhinestones, polka dots, or anything of that ilk on him. I still haven't needed to put his "incontinence garment" on him, but I expect him to try to get out of that when the time comes.

So, if you've read Dogology, you can tell that I don't fit any of their categories. And I bet you don't either.

Dogs acting weird

It's been a week since Tony started getting the new food, Royal Canin Urinary SO. I was not impressed when I opened the can. SO (I don't want to keep typing "Urinary"-- kind of a gross name for something edible, isn't it?) is very dense and dry, which surprised me. The Lamaderm Tony usually eats is much looser and wetter, and I guess I expected the SO to be about the same, but it's so dry and solid that you really have to work to break it up. I started by mixing about 2 teaspoons worth into a slightly smaller than usual amount of Lamaderm, added the usual teaspoonful of cooked chopped broccoli (Tony loves this, and it does not produce oxalic acid, thank goodness), and set it in front of him. I'd like to say that he was intrigued by the new addition, but no, he was in one of his moods, and refused to look at the bowl. He does this once or twice a week, just to keep me on my toes, I guess, but I was in a kind of anticipatory frenzy over this, so, instead of ignoring his behavior, I followed him around for a bit, tapping my fingernail on the bowl and chanting, "Eat! Eat! Eat!"
After a few minutes of this, he went into his favorite corner, yawned, and -- very ostentatiously -- went to sleep. My family started drifting into the room, each asking about dinner. I'm now thinking about adding a sock-puppet component to my coaxing ritual.

As usual, after an hour or so of concentrated spurning, Tony deigned to stroll over for a taste, and apparently found it to be acceptable. What a relief! I'm sure I've mentioned that he (like all dogs) refuses to eat at all every so often, and I was really keyed up over the potential effects of the SO. I was so hyped about it, in fact, that on my way back from picking up the food at the vet's, I stopped at a Petco and bought a "Male Incontinence Wrap." It cost $22, which is an outrageous price for what is basically a strip of denim and vinyl with a Velcro closure. I did not buy any liner pads, because they were priced even more outrageously-- $17 for a pack of 12! My sister has been using one of these on the older of her two Great Pyrenees, and she uses Serenity pads (for humans), which are much cheaper, so I'm going that route. For the next couple of hours everyone was watching Tony, but there wasn't much of a payoff. He didn't start drinking copious amounts of water, didn't scratch at the door, no blood-sugar crash, nothing. In a way, it was encouraging, but it was too early to tell anything.

Then, a couple of days ago (he was up to a tablespoon of SO by then), he seemed to stop drinking altogether. I came home from work (I'm teaching an evening class this summer), and my mother told me that she hadn't seen him take a drink in the four hours I was gone, and he hadn't wanted to go outside either. Now we were all watching him, and she was right, he didn't seem to drink, and we had to take him outside, rather against his will. He was, however, sleeping a lot more than usual. What did that mean? Who the heck knows?! Dogs sometimes act weirdly. You try and try to figure them out, but in the end, you're just guessing, and you know it. My best guess is that he was drinking when we weren't looking, ditto for urinating-- it's a big yard, and you can't watch him every second. If he really wasn't drinking, he may have only been adjusting to the reverse-osmosis water that's now in the bowl. Or he may have been registering a complaint about that change. Whatever. Yesterday he was acting "normally" again.

All of this behavioral observation seems to feed my anxiety, so I'm trying to cut back a bit, but at the same time, I have to watch for problems. His latest appears to be stiffness in his right hind leg, which he gets now and then (he is pushing thirteen years old, after all), but it seems to be coming and going throughout the day. Meanwhile, the other dogs have their own problems. Gus's incontinence has expanded to include defecation accidents (this started at my brother-in-law's birthday party, oddly enough). He's always been a bit strange in that area anyway; he prefers to do it on concrete as a rule, on the patio or the deck around the pool. In a way, it makes it easier to clean up, but it's also kind of annoying. Doc is not a patio-pooper, but he does have a problem leg himself (hey, maybe Tony's just imitating him for the attention. Hmm.); he's had surgery on it, without much success. Lately he's been flopping down at odd intervals, but Steve, my sister's husband, says that he's just as lively as ever at the dog park.

We'll see.

Things that make you go, "Huh?"

I don't think I'll ever be surprised again by the odd things that turn out to be important to anybody's health, be they human or not. On Wednesday, while I was at work, my vet called about the report on the stones they removed from Tony's bladder. His stones were oxalate, not struvite. Struvite stones can be dissolved; oxalate stones must be removed surgically. I already knew that whichever it was, I was going to have to change food, but I was hoping that we were not looking at more surgeries in the future to remove stones.

I spent yesterday morning researching the situation. I wanted to know the right questions to ask Dr. Kroll when I returned her call. She had told my mother that she wanted to switch Tony to Royal Canin Urinary SO food, so I read up on that, and I realized that there were going to be problems. This food has meat by-products and corn, both of which I have scrupulously avoided since they are linked to various health issues, and this remains a concern. As Tony eats around half a can of food a day, the $1+ increase in the price per can was not as bad as it would be for a larger dog; I checked around online for suppliers who might have a better price than the vet, but that didn't work out, thanks to shipping charges. The food is supposed to adjust the ph and dilute his urine so that stones don't form, but I was still worried about the diabetic aspect. Tony's diabetes has been under good control, and I have no idea how the Royal Canin food would work in that regard. However, the bottom line was, and is still, that more stones are almost inevitable, at least according to my research, so I'm going to switch.

When I spoke with her, Dr. Kroll expressed some of the same concerns I had about the potential for more stones and about the effect the new food would have on Tony's blood sugar. I asked her about alternatives (she guessed that I wouldn't be thrilled with the idea of the Hill's brand of anti-stone food; she was right), and she said that if I wanted to try it, we (she and I) could consult with a nutritionist to develop a diet that specifically addressed both problems. While I wouldn't mind cooking for Tony, I decided to try the Royal Canin first, to see how that worked before going the homemade route. But there are still a few details that I expect will be hard to deal with because of the food. For one thing, Urinary SO is supposed to increase thirst and frequency of urination, which in itself can affect blood sugar, and we've already had a few incidences of Tony having accidents in the house during his recovery from the surgery and the bladder infection. I'm going to look into "doggy diapers," but he still has the mysterious irritation on his skin, and the diapers might exacerbate that condition. He's also lost some fur recently, and I wonder how the new food will affect that. She is still looking into the skin problem, so I should have more about that later, but for now, she recommends continuing the antibacterial shampoo. In regard to the urinary situation, she wants him to drink only the reverse-osmosis water (we have a household filter system for that because our water comes from a well) that we drink, which means all three dogs will have to switch to that. The only problem I can see with giving them the r/o water is that they seem to prefer their water straight from the well, even though it is extremely hard water with lots of iron and a horrible phosphorus smell. We'll see how that goes.

I'll be picking up the new food this afternoon. Based on Dr. Kroll's instructions, Tony will switch over slowly, over a two to three week period. He'll also have some new restrictions on his diet to eliminate oxalic-acid-producing foods, like spinach and peanut butter, which are particular favorites of his. I sure hope this works!

A Three Dog Household

I have probably mentioned that there are other dogs here, but it's worth talking about in more detail, since there are problems connected with having other dogs living with your diabetic dog. In my case, the problem is exacerbated by the size of the other dogs and my dog's attitude issues. You guessed it: Tony has delusions of grandeur, mostly related to his conviction that he is the biggest, the toughest, the baaadest dog on the planet (or at least in the house). What's surprising is that the other dogs seem to buy into his domination fantasy, all the moreso since they are Great Pyrenees,
giants who were originally bred to protect flocks of sheep by fighting wolves. Doc (age 5, 130 pounds) and Gus (9 years old, getting skinny-- only 85 pounds) both let 11-pound Tony call the shots most of the time. When all three of them were younger, it wasn't unusual to see Tony jumping up to bite them in the throat (I had to pull wads of fur out of his teeth almost every day. Good times.). I kept thinking that someday Doc would walk in with Tony hanging off his neck like an earring, but that never materialized (a pity, since it would have been a heck of a picture). Nowadays he mostly just growls at them as needed. He still occasionally mounts them, which is pretty funny-- after a few seconds of this, the big dog will turn around and look to see what's going on back there. So much for making the big domination move, little guy.



He's still leader of the pack, however. When Tony was first diagnosed with diabetes, I worried that their dog games would be a problem. Before then, I mostly worried about one of them stepping on him -- their feet are bigger than his head-- but he would get a scratch from time to time as he tried to show them who was boss. Now that he could be expected to have trouble healing, I had something new to worry about. Luckily, he hasn't been scratched or stepped on in the last three years, so my fears haven't panned out. Gus and Doc still want to sniff him all the time, which he usually does not permit, although he likes to play "dog vet" with them, sniffing them from one end to the other until he's sure they're not coming down with some dread disease. They stand stock-still when he does this, and they don't relax until he walks away (actually, he kind of swaggers). Tony's cataracts (a common side effect of diabetes) have been getting worse, but his vision impairment hasn't been as much of a problem with the boys as it has been with the humans, who are used to Tony getting out of their way rather than the other way around.

Most of the problems we've had have had to do with food. Doc eats a lot, where Gus is very picky, but neither is what you might call a dainty eater. Tony has been in the habit of batting cleanup after their meal, and it's sometimes hard to stop this. When he was first diagnosed, my sister found a couple of plant stands for Gus and Doc's food bowls, which turned out to be a perfect height for all of them. They're over Tony's head, but easy and more comfortable for the Pyrs. When it comes to treats, however, all bets are off. My mother was in the habit of giving Tony treats whenever he seemed to want one (a classic grandmother!). She still does this with the other two, but now she lets me know if she's given Tony anything, and her contributions to his diet tend to be things like the last bit of scrambled Egg Beaters on her plate; in other words, protein. She doesn't do it often, thankfully. Dealing with the treats is tough for me, too. It's so sad when the big dogs are being showered with rawhides or whatever, and the Pomeranian can't share in the fun. It would be easier if Tony liked toys, but he rarely plays with them.

If your dog is in frequent contact with other, non-diabetic dogs, you will probably find that the most difficult thing is getting the people of the other dogs to cooperate. They may need continual education and reminders about how their actions affect your dog, and after a while, this becomes tedious for both parties. I can't help you there. One of my housemates has memory issues, yet he becomes upset if you remind him (or if you don't remind him, for that matter). Your best bet is to establish as rigid a routine as you can, so that it becomes second nature for everyone in the household, not just you and your dog.

I'll leave this here for now, but I expect to revisit it from time to time. Right now, Tony still hasn't eaten, and I need to shop for our 4th of July celebration.