Well so far, so good, on the Meatball diet for Lucy. The first day, I gave her a liquid meal in the morning… her regular soaked and blended dog food. I want to make sure she gets enough water and so wanted to give her at least one liquid meal. Then the rest of the day I gave her a couple of meatball meals, and also some water mixed with gelatin. I think I still gave her too much gelatin too late in the evening, and so she regurgitated some of it about 1am or so. She was able to sleep on the bed with me though, which she loves, and she hasn’t been able to for a couple of years, because she gets me up at night so often.

 

She was drinking a bit out of the water bowls, which she can’t do, or else it’ll just come back up if she doesn’t sit in her Bailey’s Chair to get it down again. So the next few days I gave her two liquid meals… one in the morning and one about noon. Then after that it was all meatball meals. Oh boy, does she love eating meatballs!

She seems better at night, now. Last night she didn’t sleep with me, but in the morning there was no throw up on the floors, so that’s a great thing! I really am going to keep this up for a while and hope it helps her out so she doesn’t regurgitate so much. Poor Lucy, I really worry that her throat is raw and sore from regurgitating.

The downside is that ground beef is pretty expensive, but Lucy is worth it. And another down side is the actual cooking, since I hate cooking, and when I stand in the kitchen for too long my upper back just hurts so much I have to sit down. But with the husband’s help, we’ll get her fed with meatballs. And we’ll monitor her weight, too, to make sure she’s not dropping weight. We don’t want her to be too skinny!

We’ve been feeding Lucy a liquid diet for about three years now. Ever since she was diagnosed with Megaesophagus. She’s our collie girl dog and she’s been doing pretty good, keeping her weight on her and staying as healthy as we can hope for. However, she regurgitates a lot. She does so mostly at night and when we wake up there’s lots of throwup stains on the floor of the basement. She, of course, eats it again which is a bad thing. And we really can’t stay up all night with her, every night, that’s not practical for us as humans, either.

So I’ve been thinking lately about changing to the meatball feeding method for megaesophagus. So today I made meatballs for her for the first time. I don’t know why I’ve waited so long to try it. It is more work. I am making them out of ground beef with dog food mixed in, some brown rice, and some flour and eggs so they stick together and are kinda cakey.

Today is the first day I’ve fed them to her. So far, so good. Tonight will be the test, of course. I really hope she doesn’t regurgitate them. And for water I’m giving her gelatin in her cooled water. She wasn’t too crazy about that, so tomorrow I’ll put in some Ice Pups for flavor, I’m sure she’ll like that more.

Lucy also got to go to Ma and Paws today to get out of the house and have some fun. She likes that. And we can use the business credit card to pay for our splurge. We also got some bully sticks, which all the dogs love.

Yup we are painting… but not the walls, or the ceiling, we are actually painting the floor in the basement. It’s concrete and it was awful! An ugly icky red color that was hard to clean. And with Lucy having Megaesophagus, she regurgitates a lot at night, so we need floors that we can easily clean. The icky red was hard to clean. The new lighter color is much easier to clean! However, it’s easier to see the dirt and dog hair too, which may not be a good thing. LOL

It’s not white, but it’s pretty close. And it’s really going to cheer up the whole basement and make it more livable. More bearable for me. I haven’t spent as much time in the basement TV room for a while because it’s just… icky! So now it’s much nicer. We are even considering painting the ceiling and putting in some more lights. We can’t afford tile, and carpet would just get ruined, so paint it is for now.

You can even see Lucy in her chair in the above picture. She is such a good girl and doing really well. I should get a tattoo of her to match my tattoo of Levi. I won’t need tattoo removal because I love my tattoos!

A few days ago I decided to take some new pictures of Lucy in her chair. She is such a good girl. She eats three or four times a day. She sits in her chair for 20 minutes after she eats each time. She’s actually our best dog to have Megesophagus… because she’s the most patient, and she puts up with the chair.

I accidentally tried to put Levi’s but in the chair a while back. LOL. He was confused. I was getting the butt of the wrong smooth blue collie. It would take him a while to really get used to it. But he probably could, too. Not sure about the other dogs.

This is a disease I never want to have to deal with again. Lucy is wonderful and happy and her weight stays up, but she regurgitates often, especially at night, and we are worried about her aspirating. She hasn’t yet, and hopefully never will. I think we are lucky with her because lots of dogs will aspirate into their lungs, get infections, and die. So far… that hasn’t happened to Lucy.

She doesn’t need any diet pill reviews though, she eats all she can. She’s slowing down, she limps still in her front leg, but she’s happy. She’ll be 12 next February… which I think is doing well for a collie. There was a time when I didn’t think she’d make 9 years old. So I’m thrilled that she’s almost 12. She’s the cornerstone of our pack. Our pack Marm, so I don’t even want to think of her leaving us.