Oops. Sorry. It's all my fault.

Well I screwed up royally this past weekend.  I had taken out some chicken thighs to de-skin and boil for Emily.  Things defrost super slowly in my fridge so I had left them out on the counter.  By the time I went to cook them the skins where almost room temperature to my touch.  The thighs themselves where still a bit frozen inside.  I took the skins off and had to keep sticking my hands under warm water just to get the skins off all the thighs.  I was taking the skins off so that when I cooked the thighs they would be a little leaner for Ms. Em. 

However........  I have always given the dogs fat and skin bits when I've been breaking up big pack, big pieces, deskinning or deboning meat.  So I put the skin aside to put in Ollie's meals.  He sees what Emily is getting and his plain old kibble just won't do.  I have to add a little something to make it more interesting.  Luckily it only takes a little tidbit of something yummy or a bit of meat juice and he thinks he's got a feast! 

So I had this leftover chicken skin and Emily wasn't eating any veggies since her last chemo session on Tues (already know where I'm going with this??) so I thought, "hey, how about I mix some of this raw chicken skin with some veggies and maybe she'll eat it".  Guess what? She picked out the chicken skin and left the veggies behind.  (and you know she was thinking - "I'll show that crazy bitch!" cause she's a bouvier and I'm pretty sure that's what they think all the time anyway.)

So that was Saturday.  Sunday she has some runny poo.  I gave her some Kaopectate which is liquid and a nightmare to give.  More ends up on Emily, the floor and the walls then actually gets down her throat.  And then we had more runny poo.  Notice how I'm calling it runny poo and not diarrhea?  Yup, denial.  It ain't just a river in Egypt.

She ate fine and everything else was good, including her mood.  Monday morning I got up and Ollie had the runs too.  Kaopectate for everyone!  He had one more bout and he was done.  Emily got worse.  Still in denial.  I should have called the vets by this point but I half assumed they were closed for Easter Monday.  Monday night she went downhill fast, needing to go outside about every half hour, unsteady in her hind end, trying to lay out in the cold, damp yard.  It was amazing to see how easily Ollie's healthy system could handle the bacteria versus Emily's immuno suppressed cancer system trying to handle the same thing.  This is why we cook Emily's food or she gets fish directly from the freezer.  The one exception is her chicken wings which go right from the freezer to the fridge to defrost, only a couple at a time and she's limited to 2 per day.  So far they haven't cause her any problems and I had been watching that for the first couple of weeks. 

We went to the vets Tuesday for Emily's week 7 treatment and agreed with the vet that it was not wise to overload Emily's system that was already dealing with diarrhea by subjecting her to chemo.  So due to my stupidity Emily has to wait a week for her next treatment. 

Moral of the story is Cancer dogs are immunosuppressed.  All the precautions I've read about are worth taking.  Period.

Luckily one dose of the Metron and she's doing great.  So we caught it soon enough that her system hasn't been totally taxed.

Trying not to add to the dog's suffering,
CJ, Emily and Ollie

The Canine Cancer Diet

After the initial shock that Emily might have cancer, I remembered hearing something about a cancer diet years ago when I was researching canine diets in general.  I've always been big on nutrition for myself but I became a doggie nutrition expert when Emily got really sick from her kibble at age 6 months.  We are what we eat!

I discovered there has been some really successful research spearheaded by Dr. Greg K. Ogilvie.  The short version is that cancer cells live off sugars but can't process fat or protein.  So the canine cancer patient needs a diet low in sugars and carbs (another form of sugars) and high in protein and the good fats.  Once you know where the carbs are, it's pretty easy.  You want a ratio of 3/4 protein and 1/4 veg.

If you want to feed this to a non-cancer dog add some brown rice and blueberries.  I may start adding brown rice to Emily's if she continues to lose weight.  She's lost a little and I'm keeping a very, very close eye on it. 

This diet is cooked.  We could have the raw diet debate but here's where I stand.  I love the raw diet.  The only reason I had not moved my dogs on to the raw diet had been cost.  I had 3 large dogs and it would have been over triple the cost of their kibble which I've been happy with.  Thing with kibble is that it is all too high in carbs for Emily at this point.  I wanted something natural where I could control the carbs as well as the quality and quantity of all the ingredients.  As a cancer patient, Emily is immuno-suppressed which means she needs to avoid all infections, bacteria, virus, etc.  While there is evidence to suggest that the canine gut is immune to the standard raw food bacteria, etc, I have seen her get a nice case of the runs from raw bones over the years.  So I'm much more comfortable cooking her food.  Most experts, unless they are hard core raw diet feeders, agree it's better for a cancer canine to cook the food.  Even raw feeders will freeze the food first to kill at least a layer of bacteria.  The veggies must be cooked or pureed for the dogs gut to digest them.  So this is where I am on the topic of raw.  As you'll note some of her treats are raw but frozen first, I'm not strict with the cooked idea but for her large, multi-protein meals I do think cooked is safer.

I am trying to get Emily to eat Hill's ND diet.  Dr. Ogilvie worked with the people at Hill's to develop it.  It has been scientifically proven to improve the prognosis in dogs with cancer but Emily is iffy about it.  There are some important ingredients in it and if Emily continues to struggle with it I'll have to dissect what those supplements are and see if I can source them to add to her homemade diet.

Emily's Homemade Diet (75lb dog 2 cups a day for a week, + Hill's + treats!)
Ingredients:

• 1 lb each, beef, poultry, pork
• 200g or about 1/2 lb beef liver (organ meat is really important!)
• 2 cans of sardines or some other fatty fish like salmon (use only wild, not farmed) mackerel, smelts, etc.
• 4 eggs, separate the whites and yolks.
• 3 cloves garlic, minced (use fresh, not from a jar, I just read the additives that come in some of the jar versions... you don't need any additives!)
• 3 tsp turmeric
• 1 1/2 -2 cups diced fresh tomato
• Mix of broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, cabbage, spinach. 
• Digestive Enzyme
• Yogurt
• Fish oil (Emily is 75 lbs, she gets 10,000 mg per day.  It's a lot but probably the single most important thing you can do for your cancer canine's diet)

Instructions:

1. Set a pot of water on to boil.  I do the poultry first, bringing it up to a simmer and cooking it for 15 - 25 minutes depending on the size, until cooked through.  You only want a simmer.
2. Remove the poultry and add in the beef, unless it's ground you only need to simmer it to a rare.  Ground meat should be cooked through.
3. Remove the beef and add the pork, simmer until just cooked through.
4. Remove the pork and add the liver, simmering to a rare, you only need to cook the outside.
5. Remove the liver and chop everything up.  If you have cooked meat on the bone, remove all the bones.  They are cooked and will crack and could choke your dog.  Never give cooked bones.
6. Toss in the egg yolks, the heat from the meat will cook them and make a nice creamy sauce.
7. Toss in your fish.  If I'm using some salmon fillets, I do cook them but you can do that in the microwave.
8. Cook the garlic and egg whites in a bit of the leftover meat broth. Pour it over the meat mix.
9. Sprinkle turmeric on the mixture. Stir well. 
10. Sometimes I simmer the leftover meat broth down, let it cool, skim off any fat and then pour it into ice cube trays to have on hand if Emily is finicky about her meals.  I can defrost a cube in the microwave and pour over her food (especially if I'm trying to get her to eat the Hill's ND diet)
11. I use a separate pot to do the veggies.  I like to save the veggie juice for Emily to drink.  She loves it and cabbage juice is really good for the health of her stomach lining which can only help her appetite and it takes a beating during chemo.
12. For the above amount of meat you want at least 4 -5 cups of veggies.  Simmer them until well cooked.  Dogs don't digest veggies well so having them well cooked gets the job done before they enter the dogs system.
13. Measure out the meat mixture into your storage container one cup at a time.  I measure 3 cups meat mix and then add 1 cup veggie mix.  I continue doing this until the container is almost full.  Then mix it up and you're ready to go.
14. If there is more veggie mix then meat mix, I just freeze the leftover veg mix for next week. 
15. Before serving I add a dollop of yogurt and break open a digestive enzyme capsule and sprinkle it on top. 
16. Emily takes her fish oil pills out of my hand before her meals.  You can toss them into the meal or you may have to break them and drizzle them on the meal.

Treats are important.  Here are some of Emily's favorites

• Smelts!!  Frozen right from the freezer.  Both dogs love these and they have cleaned their teeth! 
• Sardines, canned
• Chicken wings, frozen then thawed in the fridge
• Veggies; peppers, cucumber, the occasional carrot (carrots are high in carbs for veggies. Emily used to have a 5lb a week carrot habit... but we've found some good substitutes)
• Hill's ND diet.  Seriously, if she's keen on a snack we'll pull out a can and start feeding it to her by the spoonful. 
• Frozen Wild Salmon fillets
• Once a week she gets a frozen raw marrow bone.  I have to remember to reduce her diet a bit as this is almost a meal for her. 
• Boiled Chicken Hearts.