Ghost is visiting the Lair through Thursday while S&L are in the city. And what happened to my svelte young man?
He’s been with S&L almost exactly a year now, and he’s taking this ‘prosperous retirement’ thing far too seriously. He’s a grunting, wheezing old man, arthritic in the hips and stuffed like a sausage. Yesterday I had to pick him up to get him in the Jeep – and he let me! That’s the mode of transfer he has grown used to. The first time I ever tried to pick him up, he threatened to bite off a significant fraction of my face.
Yes, Ghost has grown used to a much more, um, lush standard of living. Canned food with every meal. Multiple meals per day. I can cut him back a bit on the portions if I want but if I cut him down to one-a-day I’ll have to endure the eternal Ghost “you call this service?” stare. With whining as a sound track. So he gets fed twice a day. The good stuff.
Little Bear normally gets fed once a day, and he can eat dry food with maybe an egg cracked on top or he can bloody starve. Ask him his opinion and he’ll tell with a quiver of righteous truth in his voice that he is starving. He’s right – It’s taken me five years to starve off the obesity ol’ clueless Joel let him fall into when I left food out constantly, but LB was no longer running around freely burning it off. But LB is also a big, strong, not-yet-old killer with food aggression issues. I can’t feed Ghost like this is a Caribbean cruise while treating LB like an Auschwitz inmate. That way lies fratricide.
So the rules are relaxed for the duration, and LB likes it when Ghost comes to visit.
It is hard isn’t it? Years ago we had two cats and one was a pig while the other was small. The instructions from the vet were to reduce the amount of food for the big cat… easy to do except we worked for a living and put out food in the morning then headed out. We switched to diet food and little cat got smaller as big cat ate more to make up for it. Finally the big cat had medical issues to the point where we could not afford the bills and we put her to sleep. Six years later our ten year old little cat is slim, trim and raising hell like a kitten with no signs of slowing down.
What do S&L have to say about the situation . . . or is that not a subject for discussion?
What situation? You mean that Ghost is getting old? Yeah, we talk about it all the time. We shake our heads sadly and agree that Ghost is getting old. I’m surprised at the seriousness of the joint problems, but believe he’s paying for a sometimes-riotous youth. He took certain liberties with his position as desert predator, and at the time he just shook off injury.
I was wondering about the obvious overfeeding. All that weight certainly cannot be good for an old puppy to deal with.
Well, yeah, I’ve mentioned it. Not as a criticism, you know, technically he’s no longer my dog. Just ‘an observation.’ But she likes to feed him, and he certainly likes to eat – more, these days, than he likes to do anything else except nap. Doubt either thing is going to change.