It’s been a wild few weeks. If you follow our Diary of a Diabetic Dachshund Facebook page, you may have seen some posts about my older doxie, Andouille Sausage (aka Annie for those of you who don’t speak Cajun). Hopefully we will get more answers on Miss. Andouille after we see vet ophtho later this week.
Beignet on the other hand is currently doing really well (despite the fact that I somehow forgot to give her yesterday AM insulin dose after she decided to wake me up at 5am on my first Saturday off in a few weeks🤦🏼♀️ – I beat myself up pretty good over that). So here’s the great news! Beignet has been eating so much better after I found a way to show some tough love! I bought a foldable pet gate and made her a little doggy jail for meal time. Why it took me long to think of this, I’ll never know. So the beauty of the pet gate is that I can now leave the room during meal times. Normally I have to referee ensuring Annie doesn’t eat Bennie’s food and that Bennie doesn’t just leave the room and find somewhere in the house to go back to sleep. Those are definitely pluses. But the best part is she’s eating much better in her new dog jail! She’s eaten dinner pretty much every night. For breakfast I forcefeed wet food if she doesn’t eat within 45 minutes. Sometimes I have to stuff a bite in and then she will start to eat on her own. She hasn’t willingly eaten wet dog food since February 2018. Now she’ll eat it on her own if I get her started which is a huge change. My vet says when she gets food in her tummy, it typically makes her feel better. Often it’s just getting a little food in for her to realize this. Diabetes feeding schedules are tough but add in chronic pancreatitis & inflammatory bowel disease and you have some idea of the nightmare feeding has been for us for the last 21 months. It’s such a huge weight off my shoulders to have had a few weeks of minimal meal time drama. Beignet immediately became very territorial over her feeding area. She often stays in and guards her area from Andouille. If she hasn’t finished every bite she’ll growl and go back and eat another bite or two while Annie watches her. For anyone with a dog that won’t eat this concept maybe worth a shot. I’m hoping our success continues!
Hope everyone has a great week!!!
~Devoted Doxie Mom
Diary of a Diabetic Dachshund 