I was going to post this in the hey Steve thread, but that thread is more about moving to Ohio. We are here and this is where we live now, for better or for worse.

Sharon has organized a family reunion over Memorial Day including both kids, their families, their two-year-olds and one geriatric Labradoodle. Great grandma is flying in from California for the festivities and everyone is very excited! Should be chaos and I intend to kick back and take it all in.

First, the geriatric Labradoodle. This is Greg’s dog, the first of family doodles. She is 15 now, and definitely in decline. She is still housebroken but needs several trips a day to go outside and can’t negotiate the back steps. If we don’t put up a gate she will fall down the stairs because she doesn’t see all that well. She’s kind of stiff and sore and sleeps a lot. Her needs are more than Greg’s wife has time for with looking after their autistic son and we have decided to take her into our home in her declining years. She is coming for the the Great Visit and will stay here after everyone leaves. She’ll likely die here and I’m not looking forward to that. Caring for Dallas at the end nearly killed me.

But she’s skinny, and some freshly ground fresh food will be just the thing. I’m looking forward to fattening her up. I know where to get a great meat grinder.

So I’m good with it. I always like Ruca and won’t mind caring for her in her dotage. The issue is that we already have two dogs, we have Sam, and my daughters dog Lucy who is living with us because of their basement situation and likes it here so much that I fully expect her to stay here as forever. She’s pretty chill but that is lot of dogs when you consider my idea of retirement was to do a lot of traveling.

Whatever.

We have laid in enough food to feed a small army, changed the sheets in the guest rooms and have pages and pages of things to do while they are here. The fact it supposed to rain the entire time is complicating matters but I am sure we will be OK. I have installed a second heater in the basement to try to cut the cold and open up the space for additional sleeping. The patio cover still has yet to be built but perhaps one or two of the visitors will help me with a final couple hours of work.

I am being snarky but the fact is I am really looking forward to this, particularly as Sharon is so excited. This is why we moved here and we are going to get to try it out. Portugal is still an option.

First guest arrives tomorrow night. Let’s hope she doesn’t fall down the stairs.

Back in the early oughts, my sainted FIL made a series of VHS tapes where he interviewed his Mom, Granny, for some 6 hours. Granny was in her mid 90’s at the time, getting a bit frail but still living alone, sharp and full of stories. Granny died at 98 on the operating table when she broke a hip in the bathtub. She was damned if she’d live anywhere but her own house and didn’t care that she wasn’t a good candidate for surgery.

I’ve only watched those tapes once and they are magic! Granny has a twinkle in her eye when she talks about courtship, her marriage to Andrew Jackson Gallegly in Arkansas. She talks about her time as a cotton sharecropper in Arkansas and raising 11 kids. How they all (all!) moved to Ca during WW2 to get good work in munitions plants in CA. Her dozens of grandkids and great grandkids who she all knew by name and birthday. Her first airplane sighting, her first car ride, the introduction of electricity and her first washing machine.

Grandma is supposed to be bringing these tapes. My intention is to convert them to a modern format but in the interim I’m going to source a VHS player to show them during the Great Visit. You couldn’t pay for anything better and I want the family to see what she has to say.

Now if grandma can find them. She’s a bit of a hoarder.

I wish I had done that sort of interview with my own parents.

I was searching around online for some photos of my dad and came across the transcripts for an oral history (of numerical analysis and scientific computing) interview that he gave. He was a mathematician and computer scientist, most of the interview is technical, but the first thirty pages or so are about about what his interests and schooling when he was a kid, (he grew up outside of London), being sent to the country during the war, how his father (a factory worker) pushed him to go further in school and get scholarships to better schools and then to college, about coming to the states for grad school, lots of details that I didn’t know. It was cool to read, and I would really like to get ahold of a copy of the tapes so I can hear his voice again.

My mother was a lyric soprano. She studied at the Metropolitan Opera. Her studies ended due to the Great Depression.
I do not have a recording of her singing. Not one. There were some when she had a radio show for a short period, but the recording quality was poor.

You're doing a fine thing for Ruca. If we were not traveling as much as we would like to I'd be taking in senior rescues.

Oh my. Ruca is not in good shape at all. I’m pretty sure she’s deaf and she may well be blind. Very skinny - seems to have trouble chewing kibble.

She seems happy enough, though. Wags her tail a lot. I’m cooking up some chicken mush to see if she can tolerate it.

Poor thing!

I'm sure she'll improve on a homemade diet. It will be easier to chew and digest.

I get recipes from BalanceIT, a company run by veterinary nutritionists who also sell their supplements. I don't do supplements, especially not for an old dog. Nutritional deficiencies haven't been a problem.

The BalanceIT website allows you to customize recipes using basically any ingredients that you want that agree with your dog's tummy, but the software is not very user friendly. I can walk you through it if you want to change things up. But maybe this is a start....


Raffi's Chicken, Rice, Sweet Potato, and Pumpkin dinner (lower protein, higher carb)

Raffi's a little geriatric guy who doesn't get much exercise because of his arthritis. He weighs about 26 pounds and eats 150g of food three times a day. This is a little more than a day's worth of meals. All weights represent cooked food amounts.

140g Ground chicken breast, pan sauteed with no oil
120g White rice (cooked)
175g Sweet potato, cooked, peeled, and mashed
92g Canned pumpkin (plain, not the pie filling)

(there was also oil in the original BalanceIT recipe but it didn't agree with Raffi so we left it out)

Mix all the ingredients together and store in refrigerator. We weigh out the food because it's easy to over- or under-feed when using measuring cups. We zap the meal in the microwave for like 15 seconds just to take the chill off of it.

Prep notes:

Cooked weight of meat will be about .75 of the raw weight. We buy the six pack of regular boneless skinless breasts at Costco and freeze them; they're $2.99 a pound. The six pack usually weighs around 9 lbs, so the individual packages are about 1.5 lbs/700g. We thaw a package and grind the meat; you can also dice it into small pieces.

Cooked weight of the sweet potatoes will be about .7 of the uncooked (and unpeeled) sweet potato. We cook the sweet potatoes in the microwave on the potato setting. Costco carries sweet potatoes, too.

2 cups of uncooked rice will result in about 800 g of cooked. We've had a rice cooker for years and use that. The Instant Pot has a rice cooker setting but I've never used it. Raffi eats Kokuho Rose sushi rice.

We buy canned pumpkin at Aldi when we can, it's dirt cheap. Alternatively the Target house brand (Good and Gather?) is also pretty cheap.

Isn't as complicated as it sounds...once you get a routine going you can cook a batch of food in about 90 minutes every four days or so.

Welcome to Cleveland, Ruca!

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Miller:
Oh my. Ruca is not in good shape at all. I’m pretty sure she’s deaf and she may well be blind. Very skinny - seems to have trouble chewing kibble.

She seems happy enough, though. Wags her tail a lot. I’m cooking up some chicken mush to see if she can tolerate it.

Poor thing!

Add overcooked rice.

ETA: wtg beat me to it, with more and better detail.

Oldest did an audio interview with my parents for a college radio program...I have the CD but I cannot bring myself to listen to it..It is mostly my Dad before dementia took hold....

quote:

Originally posted by Piano*Dad:
I wish I had done that sort of interview with my own parents.

Thanks for the tips!

I just boiled chicken drumsticks with rice and carrots and a bit of salt. I deboned the drumsticks and reduced the cooking water so I could include the fat. Should I have removed the skin? I’ll get some pumpkin and some sweet potatoes for the next batch.

They’ve been feeding her dry cat food to increase the amount of protein she gets. Their vet said it was OK but consensus on the internet is that cat food is not good for dogs. She’s able to eat the kibble we feed the other dogs but only a few bites at a time. I’d put broth in it to soften it but the other dogs are already putting on weight.

My friend told me their old dog eats puppy food for higher protein, and if I get tired of making dog mush I might try that. The fact she eats quits a bit and doesn’t put in weight makes me wonder if she doesn’t have worms or something.

Some possible causes of weight loss:

https://seniortailwaggers.com/...-loss-in-older-dogs/

Your recipe for her food sounds great. I wouldn't take the skin off unless her tummy can't tolerate it. The extra fat calories are probably good for her.

Some dogs can switch diets and eat anything; others need a slow transition from one recipe to the next.

You don't have to do sweet potato and pumpkin specifically. We got Raffi on that because the kibble he was on was chicken and sweet potato based. Broccoli, green beans, carrots....all good. No onions or garlic (bad for dogs).

I take the wagging tail as a very good sign.

Here's the BalanceIT recipe generator. You pick the ingredients you want and also whether it's high/mid/low protein. It generates a recipe for a 35 pound dog. You can edit the weight and it will give you a revised recipe. Unlike bags of dog food that always recommend way too much food for a particular weight, I've found BalanceIT to be pretty accurate.

https://secure.balanceit.com/ez/index.php

You don't have to follow the recipes slavishly (like I said, I don't buy their supplement - you can throw in a dog vitamin occasionally if you want) but at least you get some idea of how to formulate a reasonably balanced diet that's appropriate for Ruca's age and health conditions.

Great article! Looks like a trip to the vet has to be made right away and I’ll go from there

Thanks!

Ruca update.

She has any number of problems, none of which are life threatening. Heart is a little weak, her teeth are a mess, half blind, half deaf, and likely stressed by the change in venue. Biggest problem is diarrhea, which started after she got here. With any luck the doggy Kaopectate will solve the problem because if she doesn’t get back to being house trained things do not look good for her.

Blood work comes back in a few days and may tell the tale.