Sunday, August 19, 2007

Too Hot!

So for the past couple of weeks its been too darn hot to do anything outside. Even the pool water is boiling. So today, the only day its cool, and I'm too sick to take the poor dog for a run.

She'll be filing a report with the SPCA soon.

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Bored Border Collie.

Actually, I doubt she really minds that much. For such a high drive dog, she is really lazy. I have to crawl over her to get out of bed in the morning, she likes to sleep in. But bring out the toys or start some agility work and she's on it like flies on a rib roast...probably with all the same enthusiasm. She has an off on switch and its incredible to watch her switch modes. Its most apparent when we do our Thursday night sessions at UBH. We do agility demonstrations and let the patients work the dogs. Moxie can be on like a floodlight running the course, then off and into love and cuddle mode mere moments later. She is truly a marvel. Looking at my current ability, or disability depending on how you look at it, I probably couldn't handle a normal border collie. I definitely couldn't meet the needs of a pup like Cheetah. So maybe it's good that I'm not getting that border collie puppy. I'm developing quite a liking for Golden Retrievers lately. They have a nice working style too. Maybe when I get a puppy, it will be a Golden.

After all, there is nothing cuter than a Golden Retriever Puppy.
Except a Moxie puppy of course.

But all puppy talk is years off anyway. No puppies until Moxie passes. So hopefully, that will be a very long time off. Moxie HATES puppies. The older she gets, the less tolerance she has for them. I'm not going to make her miserable just so I can have my puppy fix. Besides, I've got this hooligan three legged cat to raise. I might adopt an older dog before then, but only if it was the right dog. Thats also probably a few years off too.

Sully still has diarrhea. We've officially tried everything medically to treat it. So I'm changing his food from Solid Gold to Wellness Kitten. I seem to recall having foster cats in the past that got icky tums on the Solid Gold. I've been wanting to switch to wellness anyway for a while. I just like their formula. The canned foods especially. They have a new grain free dry food called CORE that I bought a bag to try. I'm more keen on the cats having a grain free diet, as cats are obligate carnivores. An obligate carnivore is an animal that requires in its diet nutrients that are found in sufficient quantities only in meat or other animal products. Grains hold no nutritional value for cats. Some may argue that its the grains in dry cat food that cause our cats to become overweight. One of my cats is a carbaholic. We can't leave any bread product out in the house, he will find it and tear into it sometimes before we can even get it out of the grocery sack. Hopefully a high protein diet will make them feel fuller, longer and they can lose the excess weight and generally feel better.

I'm not so concerned about Moxie's food being grain free, as dogs are not obligate carnivores. Meaning they can derive nutritious from food sources other than animals or animal products. While carbs are probably not the best for Moxie, they aren't killing her. Her food, Solid Gold, contains Barley, which is a higher quality grain, easier to digest and with more nutrients than something like corn or rice. Besides, Moxie has done really well on Solid Gold. She's been on it for a long time. She has nice normal regular stools, she maintains a healthy weight, she has a good coat, bright eyes, wet nose, essentially the picture of health.

Who would have thought pet food could generate so much chatter or make me so happy! Well fed pets are happy pets.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You know I'm a food junkie, too :) If I can afford to give them the good stuff, so I shall.

I'm not nearly as conscientious with label-study as you are. But the boyz have been doing great on Pet Promise dry and happily suck down canned if it's available.

They're on the fat old cat formula - coats are great, shedding is down (meaning Indy no longer looks like PigPen), hairball yakking is a rarity. And now that Xcott isn't out there feeding them five times as much as they were getting, the lardbuttedness is under control.

The Cupboard carries it. Would you like me to get you a can or six and you can try it out? Poor little Strongbad. How can he develop his full evil potential with an upset tummy???

Saint Lover said...

I sure hope Sully gets the runs under control soon. Poor thing!

Hope you are feeling better soon Rach.

Anonymous said...

Hope Sully feels better soon... And I'm a big fan of Goldens despite their dinginess...