I don't know whether I feel more "A month? Already!?!?" or more "Only a month? Not three, or six months?"
Doesn't matter how I feel.
Zenzi is doing very well.
She has had zero symptoms of inflammation since her acupuncture treatment. No redness, no hot-spots, no swelling, no diarrhea, no weeping eyes or oozing injuries ... none of it. She had poor appetite and vomiting for a short period a couple of weeks ago. Turns out she got into her sitter's (not naming names) discarded (but not discarded into the trash) take-out, plastic packaging included. Plastic bits have never agreed with this dog -- they're even worse than panties and socks.
We have added two commercially prepared foods to her diet, combining them, alternately, one-to-one, with the synthetic hypo-allergenic food I'm too frugal (that shit costs $90 a 30# bag!) to waste. Both are Nutro-brand foods. One, the venison and rice formula, she was eating before her food allergy diagnosis and was thought by her vet to be allergic to it. The other, Herring Meal, was an impulse purchase courtesy of MrZ, who doesn't mind things that I find exceedingly annoying, like stinky fish-breath.
She gets frozen sliced beef femurs when she's hot and bored and about to look for trouble. She was thought to be allergic to beef.
If we have meat of any kind that has not been seasoned with garlic or onion, she is allowed to lick the platter or plates, as long as she has laid quietly at my feet or at MrZ's feet over the course of the family meal. She used to be bratty while we ate, demonstrating zealous interest in whatever she might have coming to her; she is bratty no more. Not during dinner, anyway.
I don't scurry, anymore, to pick up dropped bits of whatever I'm chopping or slicing for dinner. If it's not a member of the allium family, a grape, chocolate, or any other thing known to be toxic to dogs, she is welcome and happy to tidy up the floor for me.
I've cooked for her when I've felt like cooking and there's been nobody else to feed. Boiled meat -- turkey, beef, buffalo, chicken -- with boiled brown rice and a vegetable, generally roots or tubers. I'll giver her a serving and freeze the balance for another day.
I don't give her nuts or peanut butter. I'd rather she never find a scrap of bread-stuff, but I've got teens and she does find wheat items to eat now an then.
So, her diet is varied, but not militantly restricted or completely unrestricted. I'd be pleased to have a happy outdoorsy kind of dog, a farm dog, if we had that kind of land and a dog who wouldn't chase after deer (or get into it with porcupines or skunks -- I am wimpy about quills and stench) and maybe catch up to a young one or a pregnant one or a sickly one and make a week's worth of meals of it. I would be happy to have a farm dog and lots of land over which she could deposit whatever she's eaten whenever she feels the urge.
I have a house dog.
House dogs are just easier, it would seem, if they aren't offered recently expired or just-turning items from the fridge. I mean, sure, she'd probably get over a food-borne microbe in short order, but I wouldn't appreciate being awakened at 3am to snap on the leash and open the door to facilitate the process. I have made no bones about it, ever: I am first and foremost a very lazy and very selfish kind of Zilla.
Zenzi does scratch now and then, and she sometimes worries her paws with her teeth and tongue. She generally stops these behaviors when I ask her to. I ask her to stop partly because the sounds annoy me and partly so I can look at her ears and skin and between her toes for signs of inflammation.
She's been mostly good. One time she looked a little iffy about the ears -- iffy enough that MrZ asked me to schedule another visit with Dr Acupuncture.
That time, we simply hopped into the shower for a nice, warm scrub. After that, she looked great, and I felt great, because we had had a hot and sticky string of days, and we both needed a shower.
Maybe something was blooming at that time -- a week or so ago, I guess it was -- something that released pollen that she is, or that her oddly wired brain believes she is, allergic to. Maybe she was just bothered, like I was, by the heat. Whatever it was, it was entirely managed with a shower.
Since Dr Acupuncture told me he put vitamin B-12 in the syringe he used for her acupuncture treatment, I have considered that perhaps her problem all along was vitamin B-12 deficiency. The five warning signs of B-12 deficiency in humans are:
1. Stomach pain or digestive issues
2. Fatigue and weakness
3. Loss of sensation or tingling in lower extremities
4. Impaired cognitive function or dementia
5. Depression, irritability or moodiness
If she was indeed simply B-12 deficient, then it would have made no difference what part of her body -- acupuncture points or not -- received the subcutaneous injections. I'm just stating this here because I'm still healthily skeptical of alternative medicine.
I'm pretty skeptical of everything, but not to the degree that my mind is closed.
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