The Cantina Staring Back At You From The Abyss

[frimble3]

MaeZe, is it possible to crush the pill up? If your dog can't find anything on a tongue-search, because there are tiny bits everywhere, she may just shut up and swallow.
Also, less obvious. If the food-wrap is strongly flavoured, or tasty, she may not even check.

 

[CMBright]

You might be surprised to see how many peanut butter brands have sugar in them. Jif is essentially peanut butter mixed with lard, (they use hydrogenated vege oil to keep it meat free now), to make it solid at room temperature. It also has some sugar in it. From the company website:



So I'm not surprised to find artificial sweeteners replacing the high fructose corn syrup and/or sugar in some peanut butters.

There is sugar of some kind in all sorts of products. I have to work hard to avoid it because it's just not necessary for everything I eat to be sweet.

I know peanut butters have sugar or HFCS in them, I just would not expect to see xylitol in them given it is an artificial sweetener and a rather exotic one at that. Practically all processed food has sugar, HFCS* or both any more.

I guess I would be surprised to see regular products with artificial sweeteners of any kind rather than HFCS. I would expect ones with artificial sweeteners replacing HFCS to be touted as "diet" peanut butters.

Technically xylitol is not artificial, since it is usually birch derived sweetener I thought it was.

I think I'd be more surprised if peanut butter did not have added oil. It's been long enough I didn't realize that some used hydrogenated oils or animal based fats. Personally, I think I'd rather have the lard.

The problem with labeling, it is possible for, say, sugar free yogurt to have enough extra fat to be as high in calories as regular. Same situation with fat free yogurt but with extra sweeteners.

Gotta read those labels. And understand when an individual package is not an individual serving.

*High Fructose Corn Syrup

 

[Unimportant]

What? You had a billion hens that the Previous Dog could see and hear and practically taste, and you were giving PD eggs? No wonder he wouldn't eat them! You were teasing him!

To be honest, PD didn't really care about the chooks. Even would sit there and let baby chicks peck around her nose. She liked watching them, but never touched them. She's the only dog I've had who wouldn't eat eggs.

The current dog, on the other hand, is a bird dog. We keep the chickens and him well separated, because on the rare occasions a chook comes into his yard, it generally doesn't survive. He does eat eggs.

 

[MaeZe]

Back from the store, got everything except the baby food. It all has "gravy" or "corn starch" and I wasn't sure that would be okay.

 

[MaeZe]

Dog tales, lesson #236:

It's not over until it's over, you cannot wish it and make it happen.

A short time ago I gave her cooked egg whites and boiled chicken and half of the antibiotic dose in a tiny bit of peanut butter. It stayed down. Then I stupidly let her lick a couple plates because she loves to lick plates. There was hardly anything on them.

I'm still trying to get enough antibiotic in her so she doesn't develop a drug resistant infection. I gave her another half of a dose in peanut butter (at least that solves the getting the pills down problem) on one of the plates because I knew she'd lick it. And she did.

Then she tossed her whole guts up including some undigested chicken from earlier.

It they have any vets tomorrow at the clinic I'm taking her back in. They need to give her and injectable antibiotic and I can slowly work on getting the food thing resolved, this time on an actual schedule and with very small amounts.

 

[Brightdreamer]

Nothing is ever easy, especially with pets... (And always on the weekend.)

Friday evening, and today at work they were grumbling about me over-accruing vacation hours... after two-odd months of the first thing out of the boss's mouth in the morning being how horribly understaffed we are.

So sue me for having a work ethic, already...

And there's stuff going on with trying to adjust meds for Dad that may or may not involve a med he doesn't actually take anymore... and we can't get into his MyChart to see what he is or is not supposed to officially be on... (And tonight he couldn't remember when he calls his friend - he has a friend he calls every night at 9, though they're both deaf as posts and have memory issues so it's not exactly an enlightening phone call on either end - so he was just standing by his phone until the sibling noticed what he was doing and told him, no, he doesn't call the guy yet.)

Plus I tweaked a finger at work and it's not happy with me typing right now.

On the plus side, didn't get any side effects from Wednesday's flu shot, so yay?

Gonna be one of those weekends, isn't it?

 

[E.F.B.]

In the continuing saga of family health drama, my uncle, dad's twin, was hospitalized today with a severe cellulitis infection on his foot and difficulty breathing. The cellulitis will be treated with antibiotics, but the difficulty breathing turned out to be due to an abnormally low heart rate. They're going to take him into surgery tomorrow to put in a pacemaker.

 

[Brightdreamer]

Pacemakers make such a difference... fingers crossed it goes okay.

(And, for the curious, Mom finally got into Dad's MyChart, and the meds the doctor wanted Dad to take... he's not on. He hasn't been on for years, if ever. And good frellin' luck getting it over the weekend, especially with Walgreen's so severely understaffed and there being nobody at the doctor's office to authorize it besides. Mom and the sibling are being very loud about this, so that basically kills anything I was planning to do with the evening... Gah, I wish vacation was an actual option. Lousy, stupid global pandemic...)

 

[MaeZe]

If he hasn't been on them for years, when did he see the doctor last? Maybe he should see the doc again before buying meds and having your dad take them? Better to wait until Monday when you can at least consult with the doctor on the phone.

 

[Brightdreamer]

If he hasn't been on them for years, when did he see the doctor last? Maybe he should see the doc again before buying meds and having your dad take them? Better to wait until Monday when you can at least consult with the doctor on the phone.

Today, on the phone, the doctor told him to take these meds for the weekend, then they'd run a blood test.

This is not a medicine he has to take.

The doctor should know this.

Yet they told him to take this medicine.

I'm not sure how that's supposed to work...

 

[MaeZe]

I see. Doctors often have a means of getting a message through an answering service if you needed a prescription verified. Just a thought. Clearly you know how to deal with the situation without my suggestions.

Just another thought, sometimes the pharmacist makes the call to verify prescriptions.

 

[Brightdreamer]

Mom's going to try sending a message to the doctor tomorrow.

The way Walgreens has been running, I highly doubt that, even if a prescription were approved, we'd get it before Monday when they want to run the test anyway.

Mostly Mom's hacked off that the doctor evidently didn't pay attention to notice that this is not a medicine he's even taking, so it's not even in the house, so he can't just take X mg of it over the weekend for them to run their little blood test (as the doctor seemed to think), so now we get to jump through all these hoops for probably no reason.

 

[MaeZe]

Staffing shortages everywhere. There was no vet to staff the clinic I went to yesterday. I'm hoping there will be one there tomorrow. They are supposed to be open on the weekend.

It's weird. Where did everyone go? I suppose a lot of them are sick or in quarantine as this delta COVID strain runs through the community.

 

[Brightdreamer]

I think a lot of people got very, very burned out over the past year and a half - especially given how many "essential workers" were treated by both customers and companies.

 

[Brightdreamer]

And it's Saturday afternoon, and I've been deliberately slacking off today because the week was irritating. (Plus the sibling's in an extra touchy meltdowny mood today, which sorta puts a spike in doing much except hunkering down and waiting it out.) Will eventually have to fetch the recycle bin from the bottom of the lane (assuming they ever picked it up) and check the mail (assuming it arrived). Still need to sit down and go over that story I plan to attempt shopping around with a fine-tooth comb, though I'm still hesitating over whether I should work on that one first or prioritize the other story that aligns reasonably well with an anthology... and, yes, this is me procrastinating again.

And if I'm dithering anyway, maybe I should try finishing one of my unfinished stories...

Dang it.

 

[MaeZe]

MaeZe, is it possible to crush the pill up? If your dog can't find anything on a tongue-search, because there are tiny bits everywhere, she may just shut up and swallow.
Also, less obvious. If the food-wrap is strongly flavoured, or tasty, she may not even check.

The vet on the phone advised against crushing the med saying the med was bitter and crushing it made it worse. The peanut butter worked fine yesterday. Hopefully the peanut butter wasn't what caused her to toss her cookies.

Sat, vet is still closed. I'm just going it on my own. She has had her third meal of rice (every two hours or so) and so far so good. I think she's still having symptoms of the infection. We were outside all afternoon (yay, got the backyard mowed) and she seemed to pee a tad more often than usual.

So I held off on the antibiotic so far but in a bit I'm going to give her 1/3 of what she's supposed to have in a day. And I'll try another 1/3 later tonight.

Fingers crossed.

 

[Brightdreamer]

Flinging healing vibes in your dog's direction (or thereabouts; vibes are rather hard to fling, apparently)...

And it's Saturday night. Managed to avoid meaningful writing, save random spitballing to make words come out of my fingers. Hopefully I'll do better tomorrow. (Sorta took today as a slack-off day; need to let myself do that once in a while, relatives pending.)

On the plus side, managed to get a transcription thing done tonight; the past few weeks have been very slim pickings. (Still mostly doing it for resume refreshing purposes, and for the odd Amazon indulgence.)

And I'm coming up with ideas for this year's ornament blitz. Have one that's a bit far out of the wheelhouse, and another I'm not sure I could find parts for... Yeah. Stupid brain is trolling me with impractical ideas.

 

[greendragon]

Also, about 700,000 of folks have died over the last year

Many others have shifted from jobs that had little to no regard for their welfare, their work load, or their pay.

 

[Brightdreamer]

Also, about 700,000 of folks have died over the last year

Many others have shifted from jobs that had little to no regard for their welfare, their work load, or their pay.

Yep. For years, people have felt like their jobs were killing them... then their jobs literally were killing them, and neither the management nor the public seemed to care.

 

[Brightdreamer]

It's Sunday afternoon, gray and intermittently drippy. Need to get some exercise and writing in, still, but I did get some stuff tidied in the workshed and ordered materials for the ornament blitz (as I'm a bit anxious that if I don't do it now the much-rumbled-about supply chain crunch will leave me with nothing to work with), so fingers crossed that's moving in the right direction. Dialed back my initial idea as excessively impractical in favor of an idea that's only somewhat impractical.

And my little Bluetooth transmitter thingy isn't working right anymore so I had to order a new one. (I know it's not the headphones because they're working with my phone and my MP3 player, so it has to be the little transmitter. Farewell, little transmitter... you did good.)

 

[MaeZe]

What is an 'ornament blitz', Brightdreamer?

I don't know what to do next. Annie ate the egg whites and kept those down but she hasn't touched the rice all day. And I put a little peanut butter in the dish without the pills to make sure that wasn't upsetting her stomach and she didn't eat it. Now it's almost 5 pm and she hasn't had any antibiotic since late last night. And I only got one dose in yesterday, not two as I had hoped.

On a brighter note, my son came over and helped me tackle a huge overgrowth that had invaded my side of the fence from the neighbor's vine thingy they have up on a trellis just at the fence height. I call it a Triffid. It snakes its way to my picture window trying to get in. The trimmings filled three cans including the very large can for yard waste. And there is another large pile that will have to wait until next Friday when these cans get emptied. That's a lot of Triffids.

Also he brought me french fries. I haven't had french fries for two years.

 

[Unimportant]

If it comes down to forcing Annie versus Annie getting sicker without antibiotics, you may just have to force it. There are 'piller' things that you can put a pill in, stick into the back of their throat, and then plunger the pill into place. Stroke her throat till she swallows. She may scream and carry on, but if you can get it into her -- maybe with son helping hold her still -- it may be what you have to do.

Butter the pill to make it more slippery if you're forcing it down her.

Mix a little marmite with her rice? Or a bit of chicken broth? Or honey if she has a sweet tooth?

 

[MaeZe]

If it comes down to forcing Annie versus Annie getting sicker without antibiotics, you may just have to force it. There are 'piller' things that you can put a pill in, stick into the back of their throat, and then plunger the pill into place. Stroke her throat till she swallows. She may scream and carry on, but if you can get it into her -- maybe with son helping hold her still -- it may be what you have to do.

Butter the pill to make it more slippery if you're forcing it down her.

Mix a little marmite with her rice? Or a bit of chicken broth? Or honey if she has a sweet tooth?

I can get the pills down, but she throws up. So I'm trying to get food to stay down first. Not sure why she avoided the peanut butter today though.

As for forcing them down, you don't know this dog. She's an expert 'dodge the hand' pup.

Speaking of my son though, his dog is on a couple days of antibiotics after dental work. They were putting them in these little pill pocket things and she swallowed them fine. Except last night they found white powder everywhere. She bit the pill pocket and the capsule burst.

 

[Unimportant]

Oh. Well, that truly is a bugger then, if she's ralphing them back at you.

 

[MaeZe]

I fed her the egg whites and the pills in more peanut butter. It's a nightmare. She ate the egg whites, the rest of the rice that was in the bowl and skipped the peanut butter. She hasn't tossed yet.

Aaaaaaahhhhhh!

I have an appointment tomorrow to give flu shots in the morning. I'll try to find a vet when I get back.