Confessions of a Puppy Drama Queen

Okay, I’ll admit, – I’m not perfect. I know, I know, you’re completely shocked. I probably should have told you to sit down before I laid that on you. But this website was designed for dispensing information and advice about raising your dog – the right way. Sometimes I stray, even though I know better. And the whole point is for others to learn from my mistakes. Boy, will you ever learn a lot!

Poor Izzy had a little bit of a weight problem last year. Yes, she’s a Lab and of course, Labs eat everything that is remotely edible and even a few things that aren’t. But the thing nobody ever tells you about Labs – is that they are just so darn much fun to feed! Maybe it’s the way they enthusiastically take food or the look of appreciation they give you when you hand them a tasty morsel. Or maybe it’s just the pathetic “I’ve never been fed in my entire life, ever” look they enjoy giving, trying to persuade anyone who is sucker enough to fall for their crafty charms.  Well, Sucker right here. With an emblazoned “S” on my forehead.

So… Izzy got a few more tasty morsels than she should have otherwise had. Compound that with the fact that she was also being fed too much dog food. (This is where the advice of not following the directions on the bag of dog food, but adjusting for your own individual dog comes in.) Plus throw in a not so active winter – okay, yes, we were slackers on the diligent walk your dog every day rule, but… do as I say, not as I do! – and it all adds up to a chunky monkey of a dog.

Realizing what had happened and that Izzy’s annual check-up would be approaching, we started getting worried. We were going to get raked over the coals. I mean barbequed up. We were going to be reprimanded. We’d be made to hang our heads in shame. We were terrible, terrible dog owners because we had allowed our dog to become <<gasp!>> fat. We were just the worst kind of puppy parents imaginable. So scrambling to figure out what the heck to do to make her drop all that excess weight before they called us to come in for inspection. Oh, the horrors we would be subjected to for allowing her to get into such a state. By now our terrified minds had us quivering in fear with thoughts of the vet visit to come. Desperation set in. What do we do, what do we do? 

Starvation wasn’t exactly the answer, although, she always looks at you like she’s starving, so what would be the difference if we did? Hmmm. Exercise her like crazy? Wouldn’t work either. She just lays down and refuses to move if she’s had enough. Leave town? Go on the lam? Assume aliases? Go underground? We were going to be busted. There was no way we could get all the extra weight off her before that dreaded day arrived.

Then there it was. The voicemail on the phone.  Time for her check-up. The dreaded check-up. After a mountain’s worth of procrastination, we had put the appointment off as long as we dared. It was time to face the music. Time to walk the plank. Time to go to the gallows. We finally went into the vet’s office to accept our verbal lashings.

We went through the entire check up and it was as though the Vet was teasing and torturing us. She said nothing about her additional padding. We held our breath, waiting for the inevitable chastising. For a brief moment, we thought we might actually get away unscathed. We might actually escape intact! Hope soared for a few glorious, heady moments until…

“Izzy needs to lose some weight.”

And all the hope came crashing down. Big giant pile of hope lay crumpled and trampled, dead on the floor. Damn. No escape. We were trapped in the tiny exam room and we were about to get it. And the Vet didn’t disappoint. There was nothing to do but nod silently and hang our heads in shame. Ironically, Izzy lay grinning because she had just been fed a handful of freeze-dried liver treats in order to distract her from her vaccinations. The Vet ended her lecture by saying that Izzy needed to go on a calorie-reduced diet and that they had prescription diets specially formulated for overweight canines. We had previously been warned about the richness of her current diet, that perhaps it was too much for a Lab. Okay, we conceded, we’d think about putting her on the Vet’s choice of dog food.

So as we finished up the appointment and were waiting for the assistant to complete our invoice, I started browsing the bags of pet food on the metal shelving that lined the wall. So many different formulations specifically made for all kinds of doggy ailments. I finally found the one that was being prescribed to slim down my plump poochie. I flipped over the bag to examine the ingredients. And there it was. The very first ingredient. The very first horrible, terrible, catastrophic ingredient. Corn.

Dreaded corn. Corn, that has absolutely no nutritional value for dogs. Corn, that was the culprit of so many dog allergies. Corn, one of the Unholy Dog Trinity of wheat, corn and soy – the worst ingredients you could possibly give to your dog. Corn, a carbohydrate, which dogs cannot properly process and is stored as fat. The rest of the ingredients in the food weren’t much better – healthy helpings of low quality ingredients, not to mention preservatives that are suspected of causing cancer, in addition to another of the UDT – soy. No way in hell was one kibble of that garbage going in my dog’s mouth. Granted, it was meant to be a short-term diet. But to put my dog on this stuff, I felt, was nutritionally akin to eating cheese puffs to lose weight.

I asked the receptionist to take the dog food off the bill. We would find another way to bring Izzy’s weight down. I couldn’t in good conscience feed that garbage to my pet, knowing what I knew about dog food and its ingredients. I went home and double-checked the dog food on www.dogfoodanalysis.com just to reassure myself that I wasn’t over reacting. I wasn’t. It was rated a 1-star food. Complete and total crap.

We scaled back the amount of food Izzy was getting, cut out treats altogether except for her “sleepy time bone biscuit” and increased the exercise. The result – a lot more of the “I’ve never been fed in my entire life, ever” looks, but also a slimmer, svelter, more active Izzy without bending to the recommendations of a very bad, very evil diet. So the moral of the story? Don’t just accept what your vet throws at you. Do your homework. It’s your pet and in the end you have to do what you feel is right for your dog.

I've never been fed in all my life, ever!