Thursday, May 17, 2007

Early Days

Well so far so good. It's Thursday, 4 days after Raven's first treatment last Monday. So far the only side effects I have noticed is on Monday night her increased frequency of urination and pooping. All outside thankfully, though I did not get much sleep that night! I am sleeping in our lounge at the moment so that if she needs to go it's not far for me to stumble out of bed still half a sleep to let her out. Monday night that was about 5 times. Tuesday night only once and then last night we slept the whole night through. She is still eating and drinking well, no signs of vomiting at all. She was semi off her food a bit on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning - but she was back to demolishing a chicken frame Wednesday afternoon. She is experiencing a some soft stools at the moment but nothing too excessive. We go back in on Monday and work has decided to be flexible, I can take her between teaching classes. She will have a repeat blood test every time before they do the chemo.
As for her activity she is still running to the door each time one of us arrives home, insisting on being at the door before I left for training both nights and was even feeling up to doing some light training over a simple course and a few jumps. Feeling good enough to have her usual barking at me over jumps happening. She's lapping up the attention though I have to say....I'm thinking she'll be milking it too very soon! She's not silly, she'll figure out pretty quick that if she looks attentive enough and nudges a pocket insistently then she's pretty much got it in the bag treats wise. Diet wise she's still enjoying her raw BARF patties, veggie mash, yogurt and chicken frames, turkey wings are on the menu in the next couple of days too. I do have to say though, in the way of training treats for dogs there's really not a whole heap of 'healthy' options out there that still gets the kind of 'will do handstands to have' kind of mentality. There is such a lot of garbage in frankfurts, chicken roll, chunkers, pre cooked sausages of ANY kind. Four Legs is not bad ingredient wise but that coconut gets everywhere and plus pasta is one of the main ingredients and I can't use carbs on Raven, not a whole heap anyway. I'd like to keep the raw meat for dinner time rather than training. Anyone else know of a really quick convenient healthy but tasty option for training treats (not counting cheese) that doesn't involve a whole heap of chemicals or carbs??? Yes I can cook up liver and chop that up, and I do on occasion but even that is time consuming and smelly for the kitchen I have to say!

3 comments:

ness_bc said...

Great to hear that Raven isn't getting on to badly with her treatment.

As for treats what about things like dried lamb treats, dried fish treats or even dried chicken breast fillets.

http://www.callicoma.com.au/treats1.htm#Dried%20fish%20treats

It was Sandi who told me about the dried fish treats - not ordered any but they look interesting.

Also Ziwipeak make a range of real meat jerky treats which are good. http://www.ziwipeak.com/Products/ZiwiPeak-Treats/

You can order them online through some of the online stores - not sure if there is anywhere in Perth that stocks them but you can always email them and find out. They seemed extremely helpful when I contacted them.

Elf said...

I used freeze-dried liver treats while my dog was undergoing cancer treatments. There are various brands listed here; I used the ones in the blue plastic container (Gimborns Freeze Dried Liver Treats, I believe), but if you do a web search you should be able to find many sources.

http://www.dog-training.com/treats.htm

-ellen

Anonymous said...

Simone, how about boiling some chicken/turkey breast with some garlic, or even some beef. Then let cool and cut up in small pieces to use as treats.

Daniele