Cure for doggie fur balls
October 24, 2008
Until recently we had two golden retrievers. The older one is still alive but is prone to fur balls which usually manage to manifest themselves at about 3am when he insists on waking us to do something about it.
We’ve tried all the usual stuff including letting him go out and eat grass to make himself sick. The best thing we have found is a stick of celery. This is digestible yet stiff enough to push the furball down into his belly and send him back to sleep with a full stomach! Accordingly, we try to make things like celery and carrots (another option but not quite as good) into treats. Like many retrievers, he suffers with weight problems and I can’t see that feeding him roughage like celery and carrots isn’t a damned sight better than high calorie ‘doggie snacks’.
October 25, 2008 at 2:31 am
Haven’t heard from you in a long time, what do you mean until recently you had two golden retrievers?
October 27, 2008 at 1:14 pm
One died in January. He (Pascal) had been a most athletic creature, roaming for miles over the Umbrian countryside. Just before Christmas last year he suddenly didn’t want to go very far. A week later and he couldn’t cross the room. We’d seen the vets and they thought it wasn’t serious to begin with but we insisted and they took him for a scan.
The scan showed a cancerous growth the size of a child’s football in between two of his vertebrae. The doctor who did the scan said she had never seen one as big. It was 100% inoperable. We had him put down the next day as he was clearly in a lot of pain.
The last image I have of him (since my own religious beliefs place no importance on a body – that’s just a shell or ‘vehicle’ to my thinking) is when he struggled over to me in the vets that last morning. He looked up at me (as he was wont to do) and gave me the clearest message, “Get me out of here, Big Guy”. That took all his energy and he then collapsed on my shoes where he died.
He’s buried in our orchard. We deliberately didn’t mark the grave and it’s ploughed over now but that doesn’t mean he’s forgotten. He had many (human) friends who loved this completely amiable huge white dog (nearly 50kg) who would only bark when he wanted your attention or (even better) to play.
Pascal was 8 years old when he died.
We immediately got a replacement because we were concerned about the other Golden Retriever. They had been inseparable mates since they were both puppies. We found a rescue Spinone/cross who had been abandoned in some woods and who had had to fend for himself as a puppy. He can be a bit aggressive to other dogs (although it’s more noise than action) but he is totally docile with all humans – even the dog-terrified Italians like him!
Taylor (the rescue dog) is very popular but I still miss Pascal though. I know my wife feels the same.