Luigi, my boy, is special in many ways.  He is a special needs Doberman.  He needs a special diet due to his propensity to form calcium oxalate stones.  He’s already had an operation to remove a stone, and since then, he’s been on a the Fuzzer Diet, which is a preventative and a therapeutic diet for those dogs who have those calcium oxalate stones.  Luigi’s been actively on the diet for 2 years now, and is doing fantastic on it. The woman who created this diet has a yahoo list named the K9 Kidney Diet.  The list is a very good support system for anyone who has a dog with stones of one kind or another, or kidney issues.

Back to Luigi.  He and I are like any other dog-mom team.  I aim to keep one step ahead of him, and he aims to outsmart me whenever he sees an opening.  Last week I had a head cold, and did only the basics so I could get a little more rest than usual.  I normally feed my dogs a home-cooked meal for dinner.  Luigi gets home-cooked for breakfast, too.  But last week, dogs got kibble for breakfast and dinner, except Luigi, who never eats kibble due to his condition.

Due to the high use of kibble, I had to refill the kibble barrel more than usual.  I multi-task.  A lot.  While I multi-task, I keep in the forefront of my mind, what would be the next step my dogs would take if I … fill in the blank.  If I leave my shoes on the floor.  If I leave the chest freezer door opened while I run to the truck to grab that 10-pound bag of ice.  If I leave the toilet seat up.  I am usually on the ball, so I prevent a lot of mischief.

But something happened when I was filling up the kibble barrel and I took the 40-pound bag, which was now empty, out the back door just to throw it out in the trash can.  I had all intentions of going right back in the house, and closing the lid.  That was all backwards.  I always shut the lid, then do the bag toss.  This is because whenever going from point a to b, I find several other things to do along the way.  This day was no exception.  I cleaned poop.  Hosed off a few spots, and while I was in the midst of doing all this clean-up, Luigi was off to the side, gagging.  You know that sound dogs make when they are trying to catch their breath?  It’s like a snort and vacuum sucking sound?  Well, Luigi has never made that noise till that moment.  I’m thinking, “What the hay?”

So I look over, and he had just thrown up what looked like a pile of pebbles.  “Since when does Luigi eat pebbles?”  I walked over to him while he was snorting and vacuum sucking, and realized that little pile he had just thrown up was not pebbles at all.  It was kibble!  Blasted!

I walked in the house, and sure enough.  There was a big indentation in that mountain of kibble in the kibble barrel which I’d left wide opened!  How much did he eat?  A lot!  After all, he has been off kibble for 2 years and had a lot to catch up on.  Especially being, I had waned, and left the door wide open for him to walk through and take full advantage of.  And did he ever.

Since then, I poured a few more bags in that barrel, and he’s been aptly able to sneak a few bites out of the barrel when I am dipping the scoop in and turning my back filling dog bowls with those scoops.  That incident has opened a whole new world up to my boy.  The barrel is a self-rewarding unit, and because he got away with it once, he thinks it’s perfectly all right to stick his big head in there and grab what he can even while I’m protesting, “Luigi, get out of there!”  He’s got his reward for doing wrong.

Now the strategic ball to change this routine is in my court.  I have to be more on that ball than before to win.  Shame on me for being sick!  As much as I know my dog loves me, he will not relent when there is a possibility of something good happening to him even if it’s taking advantage of his mother’s ineptness while she’s suffering through a head cold.  Dogs are big lovable babies, but self-serving babies, at that.