It seems that Shadow has pancreatitis. It has probably been triggered by her eating the higher fat content of the puppy food. The good news is that we can try to help her get better. She’s not wanting to eat much so we are doing our best to tempt her with low fat foods and my Mistress has bought some special tins of food from the vet for her. She is very tired and has the most awful wind. The good news is that at the moment her milk seems to be ok. The bad news is that she can’t have any painkillers because of it going through to the puppies. She’s just going to have to try to get through it with as much love and care as we can give her. The other good thing is that it isn’t a bug that she would be passing on to the puppies. We just need to make sure that she is getting enough calcium. It has been good trying to get a bit more routine back for the puppies with them eating every couple of hours. We’ve got to see how Shadow is later in the morning and if she is still feeling very poorly we have to take her back to our lovely vet. At least we know she is getting good care and treatment.
The puppies all had a little taste of puppy mush yesterday, just to familiarise them with what is on the menu in the future. My Mistress wants to get them ready to accept it sooner rather than later in case Shadow has more problems. I think she’s hoping to give them just a little each day to try so that when they start on it properly they will be happy about it.
I have won a small victory. You may remember that I said I’d been moved onto ‘senior’ food. Initially I objected because it was such an indignity. However, more recently my objections have been based on the fact it doesn’t seem to be giving me all I need. I’ve been losing weight and am constantly hungry. There may have been a very small incident yesterday in which I stole Aristotle’s tea off the side in the kitchen before my Mistress had chance to give it to him. Anyway, my Mistress has concluded that when I have finished eating what we’ve got of the senior food, if I’m still not happy I can go back onto the ordinary adult food until I start to slow down. In reality slowing down is unlikely as I never really speeded up!
Alfie Dog with a little help from Rosemary J Kind alfie@alfiedog.me.uk
Alfie’s Diary – the Book is available at Amazon UK –https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00583ZGSA
You can find short stories to read at www.alfiedog.com