The Dutchess Wins Again

And speaking of getting them to eat vegetables (or anything) … there’s Frosty.

The Carrot Chase is SO far beneath the Dutchess. Such silliness only elicits a squinty–eyed, “boy, you’re really weird” look at both me and the other gh's. Frosty’s a dog of a thousand expressions and dinnertime really brings out the best (or worst) of them.

You see, Frosty is really not that interested in dinner. She is almost painfully thin and, believe me, we’ve tried all the tricks. Most of them work once or twice but any particular trick will never work three times in a row. Fortunately, Brent and I are pretty good at thinking up new tricks. I suspect she finds the whole thing vastly entertaining.

We always give our greys a good brand of kibble and top it with some special delight. Our arsenal has included satin balls, sardines, cheese, vanilla yogurt, Campbell’s soup, bottled gravy, “stinky cat food” (usually liver), beef or chicken broth, tuna, corned beef hash, and grated meat sticks (the Natural Balance doggy variety). The one that works best consistently is boiled chicken. We boil chicken legs and thighs, take all the bones out and serve them chicken soup over their kibble.

Still, Frosty will eat two or three meals well and then the next one – same mixture – same presentation – we get “the look”. For those of you who’ve had young children, it’s the “I don’t care if I don’t get dessert – I’m not eatin’ this” look…

A couple years ago I had an inkling she was getting bloated as she ate, so I started burping her. Yep – that’s what I said – burping her. She’ll stop eating, give us another of her looks and we’ll gently pat her on the sides until she burps. Doesn’t mean she’ll necessarily finish her dinner but it works about half the time and it clearly makes her feel better.

Fortunately, she is a sucker for cookies. The homemade peanut butter dog cookies are the favorite, but she’ll also gobble down “cardboard cookies” – those nasty little rock hard milk bones that have probably been in some warehouse for months. She’d eat the whole box. So she gets lots of cookies to keep her from disappearing altogether. Other special treats include hard boiled eggs and ice cream on Sundays.

Any questions about who’s in charge at our house?