We're Baaack

We took a brief hiatus (it was the end-of-term grading frenzy), but now we're back. And for once, Tony is back to "normal." He ate breakfast today, early enough so that he got his shot before noon, and he's been awake since around 9AM (with a couple of short naps), which is a vast improvement over the last couple of weeks. In fact, until today, August has been a lousy month. Introducing the new food has produced several problems, including his first blood-sugar crashes ever, a scary experience for all of us. He has, as predicted, been drinking and urinating more -- both of which can affect blood sugar.

A complete aside: I just glanced over at my Zemanta feed, and for some reason, it's suggesting a bunch of images and links connected to Napoleon. Hmm. Ahh, now it's showing something interesting, a chart about sugar consumption.

Image via Wikipedia

The high-fructose corn syrup band is rather telling, I think. I got into a discussion with some students in my summer composition class about HFCS, back around the Fourth of July. Actually, what brought this up was somebody's comment on recycling. Back in "the day" (and what exactly does that colloquialism mean?), we bought our Coke in 8-packs of 16 oz. returnable glass bottles. These were pretty heavy, so we only had soda, of any kind, on holidays and other special occasions. All of these were sweetened with real sugar (and tasted so much better than the HCFS stuff you get nowadays, I can't believe people drink as much soda as they do now), which was a problem in the early '70s when there was a big crop failure and sugar prices went through the roof (the price of a Milky Way went from a dime to a quarter overnight. Sigh). Enter HCFS. I don't remember when the glass bottles were phased out, but all of a sudden, they were gone, and the more expensive cans and plastic bottles were all you could get. These were also significantly lighter in weight, so it wasn't such a big deal to pick some up on an ordinary day, and I made the argument that this was an important factor in the rising rate of HCFS consumption, as well as in landfill density. The kids couldn't believe that there had been an effective recycling program in place, one that was jettisoned without a thought to the consequences. But the consequences are exactly what the soft-drink companies want, aren't they? They moved more product, at a higher price (and lower cost, so far more profit), they cut down on labor costs and processing of the bottles, and now people drink soda at every meal. It couldn't have worked out better if they had planned the crop failure themselves!

The really insidious thing about HCFS is that it has found its way into all sorts of products that don't need sweetening in the first place, things like dog food, for example (as I noted in my 6/16/09 post about Ol' Roy's Dinner Rounds, which was Tony's favorite food up until he was diagnosed with diabetes). Now, the corn syrup producers can run all of the informational ads that they want, but I'm here to tell you, there's something morally wrong with people who would knowingly hook a dog on their product by sweetening it. You notice that I didn't complain about whatever the effects may be on people? I don't have a problem with that: people can choose for themselves, but our dogs rely on us not to feed them things that will lead to serious health problems like diabetes. Yeah, I still feel guilty about my role in Tony's condition.

Am I saying that HCFS causes diabetes? Not really. It may very well do so, but this is probably going to be one of those research topics that's going to result in a lot of junk-science articles about studies that were financed by corn-syrup producers. We may never know the truth.

Check out those ads on Youtube! Then check out all the responses. DECIDE FOR YOURSELF!

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.